Related Clues:

• Towards the end, decreased bureaucracy? Just the opposite
• Band's left-winger became less significant
• Dispensed with red tape — came to the point
• Got less to draw on before the beginning of December
• Got less exercise and maybe rated about it
• Got to the point -- summed up without a word of hesitation
• Gradually narrowing
• Gradually diminished
• Formality rigid (as you might say!) diminished gradually
• Irishman turned up before last of band and whittled away
• Record Socialist dwindling to nothing?
• Narrowed gradually
• Pointed exchange between sections of bureaucracy
• Reducing to a final point
• Like the pointed end of a pencil