Tom Baldwin has made basic journalistic errors in his new Times long-read on Rachel Reeves. It’s only the five millionth time…
Keir Starmer’s hagiographer, who has been preparing this piece for a while, wrote of Reeves’s novel interpretation of her own career history as well as her plagiarism habit:
“Some of the most damaging controversies about her in the past couple of years have included claims that her book about women economists plagiarised material from other sources such as Wikipedia. Another highlighted errors on her LinkedIn profile about how long she had worked at the Bank of England. Most recently, Reeves was forced to apologise for renting out her family home without securing a licence from the local council. In each case, she took full responsibility when perhaps some politicians would have blamed others — junior researchers and aides, the letting agency or even her husband — for these mistakes. ‘In the end, it’s your duty to make sure you get this right,” she says, “and I don’t think anyone can say they’ve never made an admin error.'”
Exposed for lifting quotes from other authors and Wikipedia to use in her book, Reeves took the blame but also said: “Obviously, I had research assistants on the book“. Copy pasters…
More egregiously after this website exposed her CV-fiddling the i paper reported:
“The right-wing political blog Guido Fawkes first raised questions about Reeves’s jobs in banking claiming she had overstated the nature of her “economist” jobs at HBOS. It was then noticed her LinkedIn profile had recently been changed to remove her economist position. Opposition MPs have accused Ms Reeves of over-stating her credentials.
However, a source close to Ms Reeves explained to i the change was as a result of one of her staff incorrectly listing the job description on the business networking site.”
The recent law-breaking rental scandal: “Sources close to Reeves indicated that her letting agent had been expected to advise her on licensing requirements but did not do so.” By the way Sky News reports there are currently calls for an investigation into Downing Street comms director Tim Allan for his relationship with Baldwin…
The piece goes on: “Reeves has little patience with any armchair generals and critics. ‘I’m sick of people mansplaining how to be chancellor to me,’ she says with some force.” For the Chancellor to drop a crying piece with Baldwin prior to the Winter Budget is a bad sign. Chump…
The anti-McSweeney operation reported on by Guido yesterday morning reached full pelt last night as briefings calling for him to be sacked were pushed through Cabinet ministers to the lobby hacks. The first concerted effort with a chance of victory…
Senior Labour sources tell Guido that a coterie broadly led by Downing Street communications director Tim Allan, with aid from Miliband and Starmer’s energetic hagiographer Tom Baldwin, are pushing for a McSweeney defenestration.
Fingers are being pointed over a story given to Sky News‘ Sam Coates which revealed that Allan still holds a minority stake in lobbying firm Strand Partners, and discusses matters of government with his contact Tom Baldwin, who works for Strand. A countermeasure missile fired from across the corridor in Downing Street…
The Tories and Greens have demanded an investigation into whether the code of conduct for special advisers has been breached. If this happened in a Tory government everyone would go mad…
More countermeasures will be required to ward off a successful hit on Morgan, who Downing Street sources say has mostly lost the room. However this ends it isn’t going to be pretty…
SW1ers have noticed Starmer’s hagiographer Tom Baldwin lurking around with the Treasury team at Reeves’ events – like her here-come-the-taxes one on Tuesday. It’s for a good reason…
Guido hears Baldwin is writing a long read on the Chancellor. Do you think it will be hard-hitting?
Last time Baldwin spoke to Starmer for the Observer the PM reversed on weeks of messaging and had a minor mental breakdown aimed at his top staff. Let’s see if Reeves does the same…
The Baldwinification of Reeves is a confirmation, were any needed, that No10 and No11 are tied inexorably to each other. For better or worse Starmer and Reeves are bound together in Phase 2 and beyond…
Labour sources speculate that Baldwin is desperate to get a comms job in the administration. After he was spotted at the Reeves speech this week George Osborne commented on the ex-journalist’s career on his Political Currency podcast: “It’s always on the up. He’s always high.” It is just the case with some highly-driven people…
A pointed Cabinet readout has appeared in The Times this afternoon:
“In a pointed address to the cabinet on Tuesday morning, the prime minister said he “will not countenance” criticism of Morgan McSweeney… ‘We will learn from our mistakes, but we will not turn in on each other,’ Starmer said. ‘We will not resile from our record of achievement and we will not turn on our staff — including our chief of staff, without whom none of us would be sitting around this cabinet table.’”
Starmer is responding to Guido’s exclusive stories over recent days on the turmoil inside the Downing Street operation. It’s not happy families…
The PM himself freewheeled over the weekend and gave a series of disastrous interviews – including ‘dropping a Baldwin’ – which effectively placed blame for the first year of Labour on his staff. That went down as well as you might expect…
Starmer u-turned on his criticisms of the first year in office at Cabinet too:
“He then reflected on the last year in office, saying we could all rightly look back with a real sense of pride and achievement. The Prime Minister said that because of tough decisions the government had taken, it had a platform to build on, with three trade deals, a spending review that was received well by the public and an industrial strategy received well by businesses both large and small.”
Starmer’s friend and hagiographer Tom Baldwin continues touring the airwaves offering his criticisms of the McSweeney operation. Old hands inside government are briefing Starmer against the current personnel set up. Push and pull inside Downing Street…
Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin spoke on No 10’s inability to deal with its cronyism scandals on The Week in Westminster:
”The defensive crouch with which [crony stories] have been greeted by Downing Street has exacerbated the problem… there’s an uncertain shape about how they approach things.”
Former Treasury minister and adviser to Burnham in the Makerfield campaign Lord Jim O’Neill, who has turned down a role in his government, said Burnham’s first statement Commons was:
“The last thing investors wanted to hear… gilt yields have risen by a 0.25% in one day, which is a lot. We’ve not had that since Liz Truss days… If your country is under the focus of ‘can they come up with a sensible fiscal strategy’ on a day when the markets think ‘well no, you’re not showing any sign of it’ you’re going to have a tough day…if it stays like this your mortgage rate is going up.”