Guido has been passed a very amusing email chain showing how the civil service uninvited Vote Leave’s campaign director to give a talk about the referendum. The civil service had asked Vote Leave for a representative to speak to fast-trackers about Europe next month:

From: Thomas Barker, Civil servant
Subject: Invitation to EU conference
To: Vote Leave

I’m writing on behalf of a group of civil servants organising a conference for early February 2016. We would like to invite you, as a principle actor in the referendum debate, to take part in a discussion on the UK membership of the EU.

Vote Leave happily accepted the offer, and put forward Dom Cummings to speak on their behalf:

From: Vote Leave
Subject: Re: Invitation to EU conference
To: Thomas Barker, Civil servant

I have spoken to Matthew and our campaign director, Dominic Cummings, and they feel that – having worked in government before – Dominic would be better suited to address the leadership conference. Dominic would be delighted to participate on 9th February from approximately 4-5.30pm. I trust this is ok.

All sorted, then?

Alas not. For some strange reason, the civil servant then replied apologetically explaining that, actually, they had suddenly changed their programme and thus wouldn’t be needing Dom’s input after all:

From: Thomas Barker, Civil servant
Subject: Re: Invitation to EU conference
To: Vote Leave

Thank you for your offer to have Dominic Cummings participate in our panel discussion, following my invitation to Matthew Elliot in December. I’m conscious of Dominic’s seniority and so particularly grateful for the offer.

As the programme for the two days of the conference has come together in recent weeks, and taking on board feedback from ticket holders, we have decided to change our programme slightly. While the referendum is of interest, the organising team have decided that the programme for day one should more clearly deal with the history, context and procedural issues associated with the European institutions. This would then set the scene more clearly for day two where we will focus on specific areas of policy.

Given that we will now not have a referendum focused panel session I am writing to let you know that we can release Dominic from his obligation to speak.

I apologise for any inconvenience this change causes and not being able to get back to you sooner,

Tom