From: Iain McNicol
Date: 9 March 2012 15:01:06 GMT
To: All Staff
Subject: New Executive Board

Dear All

…

I was personally very sorry to see that a number of the appointments were publicised on various blogs earlier today before staff had been fully informed.

Yours

Iain

Iain McNicol
General Secretary

Labour Party
39 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0HA
@iainmcnicol

Whoever can come up with the wittiest conversation for this one will win a copy of “A Walk On Part” – to celebrate the return of the stage adaptation of former Labour MP Chris Mullin’s diaries.

Good luck…

Joyce gets a 12 month community sentence and a ban from the pub for three months. That should leave him with plenty of time for his sexy pizza parties. Turns out that “you can’t touch me, I’m an MP” was bang on.

Court told Eric #Joyce told police 'you can't touch me I am an MP.'—
Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC) March 09, 2012

He seems to have had change of heart and pleaded guilty earlier…

After a big recruitment campaign, the new £65,000-a-year directors of the Labour Party are set to be unveiled next week, and they seem to have recruited from within. As Guido understands it, the three leading directors are likely to be:

• Director of Communications: Bob Roberts.
  Currently Ed’s press man, this is a good move sideways and sort of upwards for the former Mirror Political Editor, some confusion as to if he wants to stay in the Norman Shaw building’s leaders office rather than go to the Labour HQ. Also means his career in the party is not over with a change of leader.
  
  
• Director of Strategy: Greg Beales
  Currently Ed’s policy wonk and general consigliere. His other quarter is Katie Myler, the daughter of the former Screws editor Colin. Not much change here. 

• Director of Policy: Torsten Henricson-Bell
  This former Alistair Darling SpAd was on the inside when they “not only saved the world, but saved the banks too”. He’s been sniffing around for a seat since. He didn’t go far away, and has been advising Ed on economic policy.

There are other less exciting back room roles, but these three will be the significant players. The biggest loser of this reorganisation is the unfortunately titled “Director of Strategy and Communications” Tom Baldwin, who has effectively had his job divided up and handed to other people, in particular Tim Livesey, the former diplomat and adviser to the archbishop. When Tom started, it was made very clear that he was Bob Robert’s boss. It doesn’t really look that way any more…

UPDATE: According to LabourList, who are now catching up with us on this story, Beales will stay in the leader’s office. They also reveal Patrick Heneghan for Field ops and Emilie Oldknow for the dubiously named Governance and Services Director.

UPDATE II: Or not:

Never let it be said I don't admit when I'm wrong – kudos to @GuidoFawkes who was in fact right about Greg Beales… labli.st/A0jJOx—
Mark Ferguson (@Markfergusonuk) March 09, 2012

Atul Hatwal on Ed Miliband’s deficit policy…

“Since Ed Miliband reshuffled his shadow cabinet in early October, the Labour party has issued 830 press releases. Out of these, there have been just two on spending restraint. Two. In terms of Labour’s media effort since this shadow cabinet was appointed, the party has devoted 0.25% of its output to tackling the reason we lost the last election.”

Boris was in the London Evening Standard’s office on Wednesday to meet Evgeny “Louche” Lebedev and lobbied quite hard for Sarah Sands to get the vacant editor’s desk. His sister Rachel was tweeting yesterday, too:

@joy_lo_dico Tell him, from me, if he knows what's good for him, it's got to be @sandsstandard—
Rachel Johnson (@RachelSJohnson) March 07, 2012

See also: New Standard Editor Runners and Riders