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Lynne's Parliament and Haringey Diary, established 2003
Should I talk to the media off the record?
Story of Ming and Gordon's siren voice rumble on. I am called by Sky, BBC and Daily Politics to see if I will just have a chat - off the record if I like. Hmmmmmmm - never be fooled by journalists saying they want a chat off the record! And there's nothing more to say - Gordon wants us. We don't want him!
PS If you want to know what I think Gordon will be like as Prime Minister - read this.
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No. The party would be a lot better off if we told our MPs that off the record briefings were a disciplinary matter.
I can't see why - if you were doing something with honourable intent - you wouldn't want people to know what you were doing.
I've never seen a quote from a "senior Liberal Democrat" that was to the party's benefit.
There is a terrible problem for Gordon Brown: he desperately needs Junior Ministers who have the skills to understand the areas that their departments are responsible for, and the additional skills to guide many of those departments to improve their competence in a public sector where, as Ian Watmore put it to the PAC recently, they can competently develop business processes that have significant IT content (he should have said ICT, but that is something about his understanding that I spotted a couple of years ago in an exchange with him at a conference). But it’s a pity that Gordon didn’t have a new structure to propose to Ming, as of course asking an opposition party to simply second its talented people to government Ministerial positions is not on. Now, if he were to talk to cross-bench peers about joining in, that would be interesting…
Lynne, in the article that you pointed to, you hint at criticism of Treasury setting up ‘long term commissions’, but you I’m sure also do not want any more of the knee-jerk poor quality decision making by government. In many areas the civil service desperately needs to improve skill levels, including being able to continually update its understanding in the areas that have needed those long-term commissions and in the areas of currently ‘unknown unknowns’, but, until they do that, other routes have to be used if we are to move ahead.
Hywel - slightly misplaced comment methinks. Lynne didn't make a comment, and reading between the lines seems to support exactly the point you are making.
Once again, well done Lynne.