Taxpayer-funded civil servants have been authorised by David Cameron to use public resources to campaign for Remain. Will advisers and officials working for ministers who back Leave have the same freedom? They have tonight been issued a strict ban on their activities by the Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood.
Civil servants working in the departments of Grayling, Whitto, IDS etc have been barred from giving their ministers briefings supporting their position on the EU. They are banned from providing speech material, and will be denied access to government papers relating to the referendum. Special advisers working for Leave ministers are banned from supporting their boss’ position in office hours. They are also banned from using annual leave on campaign activity. Pro-Remain ministers are meanwhile allowed to use public resources to campaign.
Amusingly, Heywood writes that these restrictions mean:
“The principles of impartiality and the proper use of public resources continue to apply to all government communications activity, including activity related to the EU referendum.”
This is laughable – Downing Street civil servants like Chris Hopkins are authorised to use taxpayer-funded resources to campaign for Remain, yet civil servants and SpAds for Eurosceptic ministers who want to do the same thing for the Leave campaign are banned from doing so. This is the exact opposite of “the principles of impartiality and the proper use of public resources”. It’s “do as we say, not as we do…”
You’d have thought Nick Clegg might have had enough of everyone thinking he is a massive hypocrite, apparently not. Clegg has just been in front of a Lords committee to slag off high pay for Special Advisers. He’s outraged, apparently:
“We’ve now got the almost loopy situation where the Chancellor is whacking up the pay of his Special Advisers an astronomical amount. Special Advisers in government are now being paid far, far, much more money than they were in the past… Double standards doesn’t even scratch the surface.”
Is he serious?
Clegg is so outraged about SpAd pay that he bunged his aide Ryan Coetzee £110,000-a-year out of the public purse.
He also ordered the taxpayer to pay his SpAd Jonny Oates £98,500-a-year.
Three more Clegg SpAds were on £80,000.
This was the 2013 FoI request revealing Clegg had a total of 15 SpAds costing the taxpayer an “astronomical” £1 million a year.
“Double standards doesn’t even scratch the surface…”
Gavin Sibthorpe, above left, works in Jeremy Corbyn’s office as the Labour leader’s events officer. He is a relatively senior figure in the Labour leadership, and was named alongside Simon Fletcher and Andrew Fisher in the New Statesman’s Who’s Who of Corbyn’s team. Judging by his Instagram account, Sibthorpe will fit right in.
Under a screenshot of an email sent by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Shooting and Conservation last week, titled “Woodcock, to shoot or not to shoot?”, Sibthorpe (sibby_gav) couldn’t resist writing: “I think we should shoot”. Has this Corbyn aide taken up rural sports? Or could he possibly be talking about troublesome Labour moderate John Woodcock?
Geddit?
Guido is told this email has been widely circulated among Labour lefties making similar gags about their own MP. Best do it in private, comrades…
UPDATE: Woodcock responds:
Shooting *so* old-fashioned. #newpolitics – fake "free vote" then character assassination by online firing squad 😉 https://t.co/tJicH2bZh1
— Lord Walney (@LordWalney) February 1, 2016
Last week Jeremy Corbyn’s Director of Policy Neale Coleman resigned amid furious rows with Seumas Milne and Andrew Fisher, who allegedly shouted at him: “You are finished in here”. All is not well in the leader’s office, and there are rumours that Head of Strategy Kat Fletcher is also particularly unhappy. So it makes sense that Corbyn is advertising for a new Head of Office and Integration, who will work under Chief of Staff Simon Fletcher and his deputy Anneliese Midgley. The advert, which went up this morning, seeks someone who can
“ensure that the teams in the office work effectively, efficiently and to have a joined up approach both of day to day running and the overall approach”
In other words, get everyone to stop sniping at each other.
The new role is also a liaison between the leader’s office and Labour HQ, which Guido is told are currently separated like never before. HQ staff complain Corbyn himself is rarely ever there, and that there is general distance and distrust between them the leader’s team. Corbyn’s new staffer will
“ensure that teams in the Leaders office and Head Office are working efficiently and effectively on the Leaders priorities and strategies… manage and coordinate arrangements as necessary between the Leader’s Office, Deputy Leader’s office and party managers in order to foster and maintain good communication between all teams… To ensure that the political priorities of the Leader are met by the teams in the Leader’s Office and Party Head office.”
The repeated allusion to making sure head office is working towards the “political priorities of the leader” is no coincidence. Jezza is offering £41,000 for one of the toughest jobs in Westminster…
David Cameron is speaking from a secret venue today announcing more money to boost female migrants’ language skills, in order to help them escape the “control” of men in some communities. So it looks pretty bad that Downing Street aides are preventing the Muslim women there from speaking to journalists. Sky’s Gerard Tubb is at the scene:
https://twitter.com/TubbSky/status/689029832286597120
https://twitter.com/TubbSky/status/689032516892774402
What was that about domineering men preventing Muslim women from speaking?
UPDATE: A No. 10 source quickly gets in touch to insist that this was simply “a timetabling issue, simple as that” and that the women were free to speak to journalists afterwards.
A Department of Health aide has ‘done a Paddy O’Flynn‘ and interrupted an interview between Sky’s Darren McCaffrey and senior clinical adviser Norman Williams. Unfortunately the cameras kept rolling…
