Brown’s Official Spokesman Confirmed Regular Murdoch Calls

Last week Gordon and a tiny number of loyalists took umbrage in this statement from the Cabinet Office:
“We confirm there is a record of only one call between Mr. Brown and Rupert Murdoch in the year to March 2010, on 10th of November 2009″.
They claimed this was complete vindication and proof that Gordon did not lie about the “declaration of war” phone call. However if that statement is compared to what was said at the time by Brown’s official civil service Prime Minister’s Spokesman, that vindication looks very shaky. The Guardian reported the following briefing to the Lobby on 12 November 2009, the day news of the official Murdoch/Brown call on November 10 had leaked:
“‘He [Brown] has regular communications with Rupert Murdoch, as you would imagine, and he has the most enormous personal regard for Rupert Murdoch,’ the prime minister’s official spokesman said. ’I am not going to give any further information about the conversation. I am commenting as much as I think I can about a personal conversation. There is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch.‘”
So there was contemporaneous confirmation from a civil service source that there were regular conversations between Murdoch and Brown prior to November 2009. In the light of the latest Cabinet Office statement saying that they have only have a record of one conversation, any such regular calls can only have been unrecorded and unmonitored. Add this to Peter Mandelson’s sworn statement that the “war” conversation took place and it is clear to all but Brown’s bunker buddies that last week’s statement in no way clears the Prime Mentalist…

Guido has been looking through the “evidence” that the Prime Mentalist has provided to Leveson to back up his claim that he never threatened Rupert Murdoch in the now infamous “declaration of war” phone call in November 2009. Lots of noise has been made about Civil Servants supporting Brown’s version of events, but that is not quite true. Statements have been provided by various staffers who heard the call:
Special Adviser to the Prime Minister Sean Worth is departing government to head up an investigation into better public services at Policy Exchange. It seems to be mid-term transfer season with lots of SpAds looking to move on and out. Worth was on secondment to fire-fight at health and Guido hears, like another recently departed member of Team Dave, he wants to be able to speak out more than he currently can about how to radically reform the public sector.
Norman Smith doesn’t really seem to enjoy the limelight off camera. After his well publicised run in with Downing Street’s Craig Oliver, the Beeb correspondent was keeping a low profile at the New Culture Forum’s Jubilee party last night. Guido overheard a friend telling a sceptical Smith that “it was a badge of honour”.
Lots of chatter and austerity prosecco at the Taxpayers’ Alliance launch party for their 2020 Tax report at the reopened Atrium last night. Downing Street jobs were high up the list of conversation. Guido put it to ITV’s Tom Bradby that his name comes up as a possible communicator. He sort of denied that he was interested:
















