This morning Guido published his own hypocrisy dossier on Damian McBride, the author of Labour’s ‘GPC Files’. Guido combed through Damian’s 2014 book and unsurprisingly found countless examples of government waste under Gordon Brown during Damian’s time in government. Editor Paul Staines popped up on GB News this morning to run through the charges…
This week was scheduled on the Labour Party’s media grid to be “Government Procurement Card” week – exposing the “GPC files” of the Tories and their big spending ways. The Labour Press team even mocked up a fake Rishi Sunak GPC:
The reputed author of the dossier is the reformed former attack dog Damian McBride. After a time away from politics following Smeargate, McBride returned to SW1 as Emily Thornberry’s political advisor in March 2016. Thornberry being the Shadow Cabinet MP in whose name all the written questions were asked to create the GPC Files…
Damian was around for the birth of Government Procurement Cards in 1997, climbing government ranks as Labour’s GPC spending soared. His “Power Trip” book provides an explicit account of the sort of taxpayer “put it on the card” spending in the Treasury and No. 10 during his years there, for which he’s now attacking the government…
Booze
Private jets
Luxury meals
Extracurriculars
It is clear that Damian and the Brownites particularly enjoyed their times in America. Guido has come across an old Freedom of Information release from the days when his inseparable pal Ed Balls was Education Minister and he with Damian McBride would let the government procurement card be their flexible friend when it came to drinking and dining. Remember that civil servants not ministers are the ones issued with cards. Note the thousand dollar American bar bills and the thousand pound plus dinners in two of Guido’s favourite Westminster restaurants; Osteria Dell Angelo and the Cinnamon Club:
Apart from the Freedom of Information release above, all the quotes are taken from Damian’s 2014 confessional book “Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin”. Guido asked the Labour press office to confirm or deny McBride ever had a GPC of his own, or whether Labour commits to ending these practices in government. They haven’t answered…
Yesterday the Lobby was intrigued to receive a mock up credit card bearing the name ‘Conservative Government Rishi Sunak’. It was handed out by Labour Press, who have since rebranded their Twitter account to “The GPC Files”. The card featured a QR code, which takes hacks to a site counting down to Monday morning…
GPC stands for Government Procurement Card – hence the Lobby merch. GPCs are used by government departments for visa-based purchasing to speed up the process of obtaining goods and services. Some departments have been pretty shoddy in publishing their transactions.
Guido initially presumed Labour’s campaign was going to be about this lack of transparency. The Ministry of Justice, for example, haven’t published GPC spending since March 2015.
It seems Labour were less subtle than this, however. During his search, Guido stumbled upon Emily Thornberry’s written questions to ministers this year. It turns out the Shadow Attorney General has submitted over 350 questions on departmental GPC spending over the last few months.
Having flicked through quite a few of Labour’s questions and the answers they received, almost every answer reveals that the government spends money on wining and dining foreign dignitaries, or putting up ministers and civil servants in hotels abroad during international conferences. Maybe there is a story buried in there somewhere – Guido hasn’t yet been able to go through the 350 written government answers. Hopefully Monday morning’s news is more than ‘government has diplomatic service that host cocktail parties’…
If readers fancy combing through the expenditure answers and finding any evidence of caviar munching and champagne swilling by civil servants, please email any egregious examples to team@order-order.com. We will be more than happy to highlight them…