Whitehall’s mystery blogger goes to ground

A cheeky female civil servant blogger, who has been ridiculing Cabinet members including Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, and taking the mickey out of civil service mandarins, right up to Cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell, appears to have gone to ground after the Sunday Times reported that the hunt for her was on in Whitehall. Her blog, The Civil Serf, has been swiftly taken down.

The Serf, who has been blogging with impunity for four months, claimed to be a 33-year-old who was "just senior enough" in her department to allow her to know what's going on though "not senior enough to attract suspicion".

In a recent blog, she claimed that Alistair Darling (right)was desperate to use his first Budget, coming up on Wednesday, to garner "a cheap headline" even if it meant announcing unaffordable new measures. "High up on the list will be both child poverty and incapability benefit," she wrote.

She nicknames Gordon Brown 'Velcro' because of the many negative stories that have stuck to him. But she reserves her sharpest barbs for Whitehall culture and personnel. "I've received a meeting request that probably deserves a mention in the Guinness Book of Records," she writes. "It is for something called the 'People Action Team' (don't ask) and it is scheduled to last a staggering seven hours... Truly there is no God."

She has also complained about drunken advances from the opposite sex. "Trapped" at a conference in Brighton, she wrote, "I was being chased about by some bloke from the Foreign Office who wouldn't listen to me saying I'm engaged - yuk!"

Because of various mentions of Peter Hain before he stood down as Work and Pensions Secretary, it is thought the culprit may work in that department. A source told the Sunday Times that while no one has yet been disciplined, there were suspicions about the blogger's identity.