The official line is that Gordon will not be commenting on Blair’s confirmation that he was indeed a dreadful PM and appalling team-mate, but then we’ve all heard that before. Instead he has chosen today, randomly, to announce the setting up of The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown that will be paid for by his after-dinner speeches. So it won’t be creating many jobs then.
In a dig a Tony his statement makes much out of the various, unpaid, international aid roles he is taking up. There was some speculation he was taking soundings for Shadow International Development Secretary, but today’s statement gives no mention of that. So still no news on whether he intends to turn up to Parliament next week…
Bad news for Lembit Opik – it seems that Cowley Street doesn’t have faith in his bid to be London Mayor. Much like the Tories were before Boris threw his hat in the ring, the LibDems are desperately seeking a decent candidate for the coalition’s first big election battle. A yellow spinner said “that’s not the way we would do it”, but Guido hears that senior LibDems have approached The Apprentice winner Tim Campbell and asked him to put his name forward…
A rather odd choice of candidate given a) Campbell is not a LibDem and b) he has just taken up a role advising Boris.
Guido is currently on holiday in France at the maison secondaire, last night we had 10 for supper and Mrs Fawkes was not amused with the constant interruptions from the Blackberry, it was for her de ja vu (Prescott’s mistress in 2006 interrupted her holiday). Guido had to explain himself to our guests. The French expect their politicians to be virile and have mistresses so this situation was tres amusant.
Guido is using his Blackberry connection to blog from intermittently and the connection is intermittently crap. On the other hand the set-up Mrs Fawkes has created is as grand as Peter Mandelson…
Am off to the beach now…
If Hague had kept an experienced press handler like William Littlejohn as his SpAd he wouldn’t be in this situation would he? He wouldn’t haven’t released that stupid statement on Monday, which brought him more unwanted press attention. He wouldn’t have released that cynical, Aitkenesque, “sword of fidelity” statement yesterday. All in all, he has only himself to blame for being ill-advised and has shown a staggering lack of judgement.
“Extraordinary”, “astonishing” and “startling” seem to be the words deployed by this morning’s newspapers in response to Hague’s nuclear statement last night. Nick Robinson was lost for words on News at Ten. The Sun manages to criticise the legitimate questioning of Hague’s judgement as the “debasement of politics” with a straight face. Over at The Guardian, the employment of Myers is questioned and The Mail join them in questioning whether it was necessary to divulge so much information and why this was done. The Mirror are somewhat on a high-horse asking if this is what Palmerstone would have done.
If the strategy of the statement was to kill the story on Blair’s big day, seven national newspaper have splashed it on the front pages and the news channels have gone into overdrive. Despite the expected Twitter storm, it seems most realise the questioning is legitimate after all. A dangerous tactic has been chosen by the government, that has set noses sniffing in Westminster. If anyone is giving this story legs, it’s certainly not blogs…
Coincidently William Hague is meeting with Guido later this morning and there will be a joint press conference at about 10.30. Guido Westerwelle his German counterpart that is.
