Andy Coulson has some slightly tongue-in-cheek advice for Sir Keir…
“… if he’s serious about being serious, he should keep my old boss as Foreign Secretary. Not an entirely stupid idea on the basis that, as PM, he wants to change the tribal terms of trade and put only the experienced and patriotic in the top jobs. Not sure the bookies will agree with me though. And the other upside of all this is that the current shadow foreign secretary David Lammy would be free to focus on what he’s especially good at… his excellent phone-in show on LBC. It’s a win-win!”
Andy Coulson suggests a leaving present for Rupert Murdoch…
“And when it comes to the leaving do (with the obligatory mocked-up Sun front page I hope) the answer to ‘what do we buy him?’ is obvious. With all due respect to the current publishers of this piece, it has to be: The Spectator.”
Michael Gove has hit out at Remainer Civil Servants across Whitehall for treating Brexit like “a big, historic mistake” and frustrating Ministers in implementing effective policy changes. Appearing on Andy Coulson’s Crisis What Crisis podcast today, Gove unleashed on the blob for its longstanding negative attitude towards Brexit:
“If we fast-forward to now, I think one of the issues inescapably has been the attitude that some people have had towards Brexit. So there are some ministers who have been hard-driving, who have worried that across the Civil Service there was a sense that Brexit was a big, historic mistake. Therefore there hasn’t been the same enthusiasm for some of the changes that are necessary as there might have been for other policy changes.”
This is obvious to anyone even paying half-attention. It’s not just Brexit, either. Earlier this week Home Office staff were threatening to strike over the Rwanda policy. If Civil Servants don’t like the incumbent government’s agenda, they are more than welcome to leave Whitehall to go and join LOTO…
Yesterday the Telegraph told its staff they were planning to lay-off 20 sub-editors and farms out their work to Press Association. Today, it emerges the paper has hired Andy Coulson to do their PR. According to Greenslade:
“His public relations firm, Coulson Chappell, has been awarded a contract to improve the standing of the company’s publications, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. His main brief is thought to be to promote the papers as truthful and authoritative.”
The news has been met with bewilderment and gallows humour in the newsroom. How many of those subs’ salaries will be going on Coulson’s PR paycheck?
He’ll be looking for a job…
Judge Lord Burns rules he has no case to answer in his perjury trial…
