I see Gordon Brown is being criticised for playing politics by holding occasional cabinet meetings outside London – not to mention the increased costs associated with nomadic meetings. Be that as it may, I have a completely different observation that applies to all cabinet meetings - wherever they are held. It is the shape of the table.

I have never been invited to a cabinet meeting – pity really, I could run a feedback session about their processes and behaviour that would hold them enthralled – but I have seen photographs. In the Times, for example, there was a photograph of the cabinet meeting held recently at Exeter Racecourse. I have also seen photographs of the cabinet meeting at their regular venue, 10 Downing Street. In every photograph they are always sitting along two sides of a rectangular table; a hopeless set up if people want to engage in meaningful discourse.

I realise that I am making an assumption here: namely, that to engage in meaningful discourse would be a good idea at cabinet meetings. Perhaps the whole thing is deliberately designed to minimise the risk of engaging in meaningful discourse? Perhaps all that is called for is a bit of rubber-stamping, everything going through on the nod?

But just suppose, for one wild moment, that it is desirable for cabinet meetings to be organised so that genuine dialogue is actively encouraged prior to reaching informed collective decisions. Surely a round table would be a must where the participants can actually see and hear each other? The cabinet are not alone. I have visited numerous boardrooms with large – sometimes very large – rectangular tables and have never come across a round one. I once worked with an organisation where a round table was offered as part of a refurbishment programme. To my astonishment, the offer was turned down and they elected to stick with their rectangular table. Only afterwards did I find out why. The CEO was a bully and he always sat in the middle of one side of the table (that’s funny, this is the same seat that prime ministers traditionally occupy!). The CEO had a habit of picking on people seated on the opposite side of the table to him and giving them a particularly hard time. People on his side of the table were only in his periphery vision and tended to escape his wrath. So, unbeknown to him, they had a “victim’s rota” whereby people would take it in turns to be sacrificial offerings by sitting in the seats opposite him. A round table would have mucked up their secret arrangement.

Might, I wonder mischievously, this explain the cabinet’s apparent liking for a large rectangular table?