Growling Chris Grayling was out of the loop doing his own speech to conference when it was leaked that General Dannatt was joining the Tories in the Lords.  He told the BBC’s Emily Maitlis

“I admire the work of General Dannatt and other senior generals who’ve done so much in Afghanistan and done so much to lead. I hope that this isn’t a political gimmick. We’ve seen too many appointments in this government of external people where it’s all been about Gordon Brown’s PR. General Dannatt’s an experienced figure and should rightly be working alongside government. I’m always suspicious of government’s motives when it does things like this.

Except it wasn’t the government making the appointment, it was to be Cameron in his speech tomorrow.  Ouch.

He has had to do another interview explaining that he doesn’t really think it is a PR gimmick now he knows he is going to be working for a future Tory government. We are at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia…