Byrne Fires on Downing Street

Colin Byrne, CEO of mega-spin merchants, Weber Shandwick, is a former protege of Mandelson and was the Labour Party's chief press officer from 1988 to 1992. He has his own blog and has, judging by his latest post, had enough of the team of second raters around Gordon.

Quite what prompted the incompetents - as they clearly are these days for all their fat salaries and big job titles and egos - in the No. 10 bunker to have the PM telling us to eat up our crusts one day and be photographed waving a glass of wine around the G8 dinner table as he tucked into the conger eel the next is beyond this simple communications guy’s understanding.

Guido has been patiently waiting for the anti-Brownies to come out and openly attack Gordon. Blairites and ministers are briefing anonymously, the rank-and-file on LabourHome are in open revolt. Expect more of this all summer...

Guido Says Jump, Downing Street Geeks Jump

Guido asked where were the promised answers due at the end of last month on Sunday, and again on Tuesday. Today, after Guido's prompting and some prolonged dithering, we have the "answers" - basically the usual platitudes.

The best questioner asks the PM why should he be PM? Asks him to sell himself to us and answer the question why is he the best man for the job? He simply is unable to answer the question. He tells us what he wants to do, not why he is the best man for the job.

The polls tell us that voters don't think he is the best man for the job. Tragic.

Downing Street Still Not Listening

There was a lot of talk when David Muir was appointed from WPP that he would turn the Prime Mentalist into a digital leader superior to WebCameron. Advertising "guru" Muir even wrote a paean to the power of YouTube in his WPP days. The YouTube "Ask the PM" initiative was presumably his idea - dozens of people have asked the PM, with no answers despite them being promised and now well overdue.

Things actually seem to be getting worse on the digital front. If you are unable to get an answer from Downing Street's YouTube channel emailing the Prime Minister should be easy - that was set up during Blair's time. Alas, for weeks now Gordon's public email has been out of order:

This service has been temporarily suspended for maintenance work. Don't worry, we are still accepting faxes and letters, and you can still let us know your opinions via an epetition or on our new Twitter service.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused. We hope to be back up and running in a few days.

23 June 2008

Maintenence work for email? Eh? Basically Downing Street, digitally speaking, is in broadcast-only mode. They can send you messages, but you can't tell them anything. A metaphor for the bigger picture...

Another Day, Another Downing Street Rat...

Andrew Porter reports that Martin Sheehan, Gordon's Head of Strategic Communications, is making the dash for cash to PR firm Portland.

Martin Sheehan says: "The opportunity to join Portland at this stage in the company's growth is one I couldn't refuse. Working for two Prime Ministers has been a fantastic experience. After spending eight of the last ten years in Downing Street, it's time for a new challenge." Translation: a year of the Prime Mentalist is enough for me...

Downing Street Rat Dashes for Cash

As Guido pointed out yesterday, the captain is taking down the Labour ship with him and as this email from Fiona Gordon (his Downing Street political secretary) shows, the rats are doing the proverbial:

Dear Colleague,

Tomorrow will be my last day as Gordon Brown's Political Secretary. It has been a privilege to work for Gordon and the wider team here at No 10 and I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity. It has been a fascinating and hectic year.

I have also been lucky to work closely with you, not only in my current post but as the first women PLP Secretary. I will be taking away very many happy memories, particularly of the evening we gathered in the Chamber for the photograph to mark the Centenary of the PLP.

My next venture is to start my own communications business which I am very excited about.

My mobile number will remain the same xxxxxxx, my new email address is xxx@xxx.com Joe Irvin has been appointed to replace me. Joe has for the past year worked as a special adviser to the Prime Minister on trade union, employment and housing issues.

He is a lifelong Labour Party member and previously worked as special adviser to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott 1996-2001, and was for many years a trade union official. I know you will give him all your support.

With my best wishes
Fiona

She is obviously going to try in cash in over the next year before her contacts become worthless...

Spot the Difference

Spot the difference : Naomi met Gordon in Downing Street today. Known to be hot-tempered, she was once charged with second degree assault after allegedly hitting her assistant. The assistant needed four stitches to her head after being hit by a mobile phone following a row according to NYPD. The other has so far missed his target.

So the Answer is "No"

The official report of yesterday morning's Lobby briefing is the usual waste of time and evasive non-answers from the PMS. However this bit of obsfucation amused Guido:

Asked if the Prime Minister was happy, the PMS said that the Prime Minister, as he had said himself before, believed that he had the best job in the world and he was focusing on meeting the priorities of the British people; that’s what we were doing today and what we would be doing for the days and weeks ahead.

"No" in other words...

Bloggers Force No. 10 to RemovePartisan Material on Website

Shane Greer wrote a story on Friday highlighting the links driving traffic from the Downing Street website to the Labour Party's local elections campaign website. This breaches the Ministerial Code which states explicitly:

6.3 Official facilities and resources may not be used for the dissemination of material which is essentially party political.

or

8.4 Ministers must only use official machinery for distributing texts of speeches relating to Government business. Speeches made in a party political context must be distributed through the Party machinery.

Linking to the front page of the Labour Party website seems to Guido to clearly breach the rules.

The Cabinet Office issued specific guidance on 20 March 2008:

“Elections to Local Authorities in England and Wales and to the Greater London Authority - Guidance on Conduct for Civil Servants in UK Government Departments”

Under the heading “Communication Activities” it states…

“It is also important to take care with official websites which will be scrutinised closely by the news media and the political parties during election periods.”

The story was taken up by PJC and Wonko's World. Wonko complained to a Mr Brown (no relation) on the Ethics Desk of the Cabinet Office. The link was gone yesterday afternoon. So much for the PR skills of the much heralded Carter imported Downing Street digital new media team. Guido has been compiling evidence of a pattern of systemic fraud by the Labour Party in abusing government resources for partisan purposes...

developing...

Chinese Goons in Downing Street

Was Guido the only one who felt dismayed watching Chinese heavies pushing people around in Downing Street itself? Gordon just stood there pathetically while Chinese security thugs with fingers on radio-earpieces directed matters. The British people were outside the gates screaming their disapproval. Tessa Jowell gave a stomach turning semi-justification. It seems to Guido entirely unnecessary for politicans to get involved in this shaming spectacle when colleagues of these Chinese security agents are killing freedom loving Tibetans. It could and should have been left to the sportsmen and woman to conduct any ceremony.

The line from Gordon that he didn't touch the torch itself is characteristically cowardly. He should have had nothing to do with the event in the current circumstances. It should not have been accorded full political honours.

Oh Look, De-Nazification After Bloggers Pointed Out the Obvious

Notice the logo has been cropped so that it no longer looks like a swastika. Guido's server logs showed an unusual amount of attention being paid from Downing Street yesterday. Gotcha! (again).

The DK has more on the subject from a critical design perspective. Trivial? Or does it illustrate a certain cack-handed incompetence?

Do You Think This is Herr Braun's Swastika?

A lot of people think Gordon's new logo for his Downing Street Förderung des Wohlstands durch progressive Governance conference looks a bit dodgy. Only this afternoon they sent out tens of thousands of emails calling on people to visit the site and get engaged. They have now taken down the website (so you won't be able to "add your voice") since ConservativeHome said it looked like a symbol of national socialism. Guido can't see it himself...

What is the "Forward Risk Horizon Scanning Unit"?

Could a Downing Street lackey leak to us what this new unit is all about? Guido is a little uncertain if the unit's name he has been given is precisely correct, sounds like a PR man's creation doesn't it? Is Stephen Carter the father of the unit? Does it actually exist as more than a coffee and doughnuts meeting?

Is it part of the not-another-relaunch "Brown Phase 2" that Riddell is waffling about this morning? Is it just a "There May Be Trouble Ahead, Lets Figure Out Our Excuses Unit"? Enquiring bloggers want to know...

Guido Writes, Downing Street Deletes

Nice to know that despite the change of regime from Blairites to Brownies, Guido still has a following in Downing Street (Wegg-Prosser and Matthew Taylor were avid Guido readers).

Yesterday morning Guido mocked Brown's speech where he innumerately claimed that a billion people were a third of humanity. The posted linked to the speech transcript on the Downing Street website.Within an hour of that post being published, some modern day successor to Winston Smith had deleted the wording from the transcript. Doubleplus ungood malquote.You see if they delete it from the transcript record, Gordon never made the mistake. Just like when Gordon says he will bring a "thousand troops home for Christmas", the Sun will report a thousand of our boys coming home for Christmas. We have always been at war with Eurasia... our glorious forces have achieved a total victory in Basra...

Fake Ministerial Interaction

A co-conspirator has tipped Guido off to another bit of "faking it" from the government. Keen to show their commitment to e-Democracy (whatever that is) they have been putting great effort into hosting ministerial webchats on the Downing Street website. The trouble is that they only attract malcontents, the mischevious or almost no one at all. After all who really wants to webchat with the likes of Ed Miliband?

This morning's live webchat was with the Minister for "I'll have an affordable house with double mortgage subsidy"* and Housing, Yvette Cooper. Only ten people bothered to log in. One of them was Karen Doran.

Karen Doran: What is the government doing to make sure their policy on housing (regeneration and growth) is aligned to policies designed to promote economic growth. Could the Minister give practical examples of the opportunities this presents to local authorities in their place shaping role?

Yvette replies: You are right Karen that new homes need to be planned alongside new jobs -- as we are doing in the Thames Gateway, which is a major area of regeneration and housing growth. But housing and economic policies need to work closely together for existing communities too. Look at what cities like Manchester and Birmingham have done in their city centres -- creating new jobs, but bringing people back into the cities to live as well.

If that patsy question reads like a planted question, it is because it is almost certainly exactly that. Now why she needed to ask the question in a "public engagement" exercise is beyond Guido. Karen Doran works on the Community Housing Task Force (formerly part of the office of the Deputy Prime Minister) where she advises on "Communications and Consultation Strategy". So it seems unnecessary for her to pose as a member of the public to ask the housing minister a question.

We are today living in a government which follows a Potemkin strategy of public relations, merely artificial photo opportunities have now been replaced by completely faked photographs. Public engagement is now simulated, the only members of the public the PM interacts with are photogenic school children. When Potemkin built his villages they were intended to fool one person - Catherine the Great, now New Labour wants to fool everyone in Great Britain.

*Yvette is actually Mrs Balls, despite them having a joint household income of some quarter of a million pounds between them, Mr and Mrs Balls claim tens of thousands of pounds every year in mortgage subsidy to make their housing more affordable.