It looks like Anneliese Dodds didn’t get Sir Keir’s memo on the mourning period. Despite the moratorium on Labour MPs doing non-royal media appearances until after the funeral, Dodds is currently entertaining clients of media monitoring company DeHavilland in an hour-long Zoom conversation. At the time of going to pixel, the event is still in full swing, and is scheduled to finish at 10.30. In Dodds’ defence, it was first advertised two weeks ago…
On Wednesday 14 September, DeHavilland will be hosting Anneliese Dodds MP, Chair of the Labour Party to discuss Labour's processes for manifesto and policy creation for public affairs teams.
— DeHavilland (@DeHavilland) August 30, 2022
Interested in attending? Email info@dehavilland.co.uk
Since then, world events have changed somewhat – something Dodds apparently acknowledged by saying it’s “a difficult time in politics“… and that’s it. Guido’s mole reports DeHavilland’s Arran Russell, the host, also asked the virtual attendees explicitly not to mention the event on social media given the bad optics. We’ll just keep this between us…
UPDATE: Dodds has just wrapped up the event:
“I should just say, I’m rather disappointed… at the beginning of this session [the host] asked people not to particularly publicise this event. You know, I kind of agreed with that because I think this is a time of mourning. It’s not because I’m not happy and wanting to have these discussions with businesses, quite the opposite. Which is why I wanted to continue… clearly someone else had a different view, I’ve just been informed…”
