Corporation’s talks with DCMS suggests it could axe a channel The BBC is in talks with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about cutting the red tape involved in axing a service, the clearest indication the corporation could close a channel to save money. The DCMS and the BBC have held talks about changing the so-called public value test – a lengthy consultation the corporation must undertake if it wants to launch or close a service. According to sources the BBC wants to remove a stipulation that it must launch a PVT if it wants to close a service. “DCMS has had discussions with the BBC about the PVT provisions in the BBC agreement but no decisions have been reached,” said a spokesman for the department. Following last autumn’s stringent licence fee settlement, the BBC is looking at how it can make 20% cuts. The BBC Trust wrote to director general Mark Thompson earlier this year saying that so-called “salami slicing” – spreading cuts around equally – “would not be in the interests of licence payers”, even if it could achieve the scale of savings required. However those working on Thompson’s Delivering Quality First consultation, which aims to trim budgets by about 16%, were told that there would not be cuts in “services”. Thompson is trying to use DQF to work out how the BBC can manage with a six-year licence fee freeze and take on additional funding obligations such as BBC World Service. There has been keen debate between executives and the BBC Trust about “salami-slicing” versus axing a service. One insider said: “One of the things that makes it more difficult to close down a channel is the process that it is subject to.” Under article 25 of the BBC agreement that was laid out in 2007, the BBC Trust “will be required to apply the PVT before a decision is taken to make any significant change to the BBC’s UK public services (which can include introducing a new service or discontinuing a service).” “We are in discussions with the DCMS about some of the detail in the PVT provisions but no decision has been reached,” said a spokesman for the BBC Trust. According to sources, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is not keen on the idea of changing the agreement. Closing a channel or drastically changing it as a result of the new “shotgun” licence fee settlement would undoubtedly reflect badly on the government. The lengthy consultation the BBC had to go through when it wanted to close 6 Music, a decision that was eventually reversed, proved how much bureaucracy the corporation has to go through to axe a service. PVT’s have been considered an important safeguard to making sure the rationale for launching – or closing – a service is thoroughly sound. To date the BBC Trust has conducted four PVTs – it approved the iPlayer, HD television and controversial Gaelic TV channel BBC Alba, but blocked a plan to launch a network of 60 local video sites that had incensed commercial rivals . • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . BBC BBC Trust Television industry Radio industry Tara Conlan guardian.co.uk
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German authorities urge consumers to start eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce again Investigators have said German-grown bean sprouts are the cause of the E coli outbreak that has killed 29 people, the head of Germany’s national disease control centre announced on Friday. Reinhard Burger, the president of the Robert Koch Institute, which is responsible for disease control and prevention in Germany, said there was enough evidence to draw the conclusion even though no sprouts from an organic farm in Lower Saxony had tested positive for the E coli strain. “It was possible to narrow down epidemiologically the cause of the outbreak of the illness to the consumption of sprouts,” Burger said at a news conference. “It is the sprouts.” The sprouts were initially blamed for the outbreak on Sunday, but authorities backpedalled the following day after negative laboratory tests. The breakthrough in the investigation came when a taskforce linked patients who had fallen ill to 26 restaurants and cafeterias that had received produce from the organic farm. Helmut Tschiersky-Schöneburg, of Germany’s consumer protection agency, said: “It was like a crime thriller where you have to find the bad guy.” Andreas Hensel, the head of the country’s risk assessment agency, said: “They even studied the menus, the ingredients, looked at bills and took pictures of the different meals, which they then showed to those who had fallen ill.” Hensel said the authorities were lifting the warning against eating other foodstuffs. “Lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers should be eaten again – it is all healthy produce,” he said. Burger said it was possible that all the tainted sprouts had been consumed or thrown away by now, but warned that people should not eat sprouts. While the farm in the northern German village of Bienenbuettel that has been blamed for the outbreak was shut down last Thursday and all its produce recalled, experts said they could not exclude the possibility that some tainted sprouts were still being used by restaurants and people could still get infected with E coli . Officials said it was possible that other nearby farms could be affected because it had not yet been established whether the seeds or the farm’s water had been contaminated. During the course of the investigation, non-lethal E coli was also found on cucumbers from Spain and beet sprouts from the Netherlands. E coli Food safety Food & drink Germany Europe guardian.co.uk
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Tahawwur Rana is found guilty of plotting attack on Danish newspaper but cleared of Mumbai charge in closely-watched trial A federal jury has convicted a Chicago businessman of helping to plot an attack against a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, but cleared him of the most serious terrorism charge he faced of co-operating in the deadly 2008 rampage in Mumbai. The jury reached its split verdict after two days of deliberations, finding Tahawwur Rana guilty of providing material support to terrorism in Denmark and to the Pakistani militant group that claimed responsibility for the three-day siege in India’s largest city that left more than 160 people dead, including six Americans. The jurors, who were not identified in court, declined to talk to the media to explain their decision, which defence lawyers described as conflicting. Rana, a Canadian national who has lived in Chicago for years, faces up to 30 years in prison on the two charges. “We’re extremely disappointed. We think they got it wrong,” defence attorney Patrick Blegen told reporters. At the centre of the trial was testimony by the government’s star witness, David Coleman Headley , Rana’s longtime friend. Headley had previously pleaded guilty to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attacks and planning to attack the Danish paper in retaliation for printing the cartoons, which had angered many Muslims because pictures of the prophet are prohibited in Islam. That plot was never carried out. Headley’s testimony was closely watched worldwide because it provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which took credit for the Mumbai attacks, and the group’s alleged co-operation with Pakistan’s top intelligence agency known as the ISI . The trial started weeks after US navy Seals found Osama bin Laden hiding outside Islamabad, raising concerns that Pakistan may have been protecting the world’s most wanted terrorist. The Pakistani government has denied the allegations and maintained it did not know about Bin Laden or help plan the Mumbai attacks. Ujjwal Nikam, the special public prosecutor in the Mumbai attack trial in India, said he was disappointed with the verdict. “When Rana has been held guilty of assisting the Lashkar-e-Taiba and guilty of supporting terrorist acts in Denmark, how have they separated him from the Mumbai attacks?” he said. “It appears that there are some apparent contradictions in this verdict.” India’s internal security chief, UK Bansal, told reporters that the verdict should not be a setback for the case in India. “The judicial systems in both countries are different. We will be presenting our evidence before our own courts,” Bansal said. Defence lawyers spent much of their time trying to discredit Headley, who they claim duped his friend from a Pakistani boarding school. They attacked Headley’s character, saying he initially lied to the FBI, lied to a judge and even lied to his own family. They claimed he implicated Rana in the plot because he wanted to make a deal with prosecutors, something he had learned about when he became an informant for the US drug enforcement administration after two heroin convictions. But prosecutors claimed Rana, 50, knew exactly what he was doing when he helped Headley. Rana, who did not testify, was on trial for allegedly allowing Headley to open a branch of his Chicago-based immigration law services business in Mumbai as a cover story while Headley conducted surveillance before the November 2008 attacks. He was also accused of letting Headley, who will avoid the death penalty and extradition because of his co-operation, travel as a representative of the company in Copenhagen. Prosecutors used a phone call between Rana and Headley, recorded on 7 September 2009, as the centrepiece of their evidence against Rana. In the call, the men discussed the Mumbai attacks and Headley talked about future targets, including the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Prosecutors also questioned the validity of Rana wanting to open a branch of his office in Denmark and sending Headley to the Copenhagen newspaper’s office simply to inquire about advertising, which could have been done via email or telephone. The US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said he was gratified by the jury’s decision and disagreed with defence lawyers who said the verdict was conflicting because Rana was convicted of supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba but acquitted of helping in the Mumbai attacks. “There are lots of ways you could explain it, but I have not spoken to the jury,” Fitzgerald said. “There was clearly evidence that he knew he was working with Lashkar.” In court, prosecutors played clips of Rana’s post-arrest statement to the FBI, in which he said he knew Headley had trained with Lashkar, which the US has declared a terrorist organisation. It was also clear from the recording that Rana was at least aware of the others allegedly involved in the Danish plot. Six others were charged in absentia in the case, including an ISI member known only as Major Iqbal and Headley’s Lashkar handler, Sajid Mir. According to Headley’s testimony, Lashkar was initially involved in planning the Danish plot. But after the Mumbai attacks, the group decided to lay low, according to Headley, who said he proceeded to work with another militant group. While much of Headley’s testimony had been heard before – both through the indictment and a report released by the Indian government last year – he did reveal a few new details. Among them was that another militant leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, who US officials believed to be al-Qaida’s military operations chief in Pakistan, had plotted to attack the US defence contractor Lockheed Martin. Kashmiri was reported killed on 3 June by US drone attacks inside Pakistan. While US officials have not confirmed the death, Pakistani officials say they are certain he is dead. Headley said he worked with Kashmiri in the plot against the Danish paper, describing how the militant wanted a “stronghold approach”. One plan included taking hostages in the building and killing them quickly by beheading them. “He said we should throw out the heads of the hostages from the windows,” Headley said of Kashmiri, speaking in a monotone and seemingly detached voice. “He said shoot them first and then behead them later, so there wouldn’t be a struggle.” Global terrorism Mumbai terror attacks Muhammad cartoons row 2006 United States Pakistan guardian.co.uk
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Robert Gates blasts ‘two-tiered’ alliance of those willing to wage war and those who don’t share the risks and costs The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, has delivered a blistering attack on European defence complacency, declaring that Nato has become a “two-tiered” alliance of those willing to wage war and those only interested in “talking” and peacekeeping. In his bluntest warning in nearly five years as Pentagon head under two US presidents, Gates announced that Washington’s fading commitment to European security could spell the death of the 60-year-old alliance. In a valedictory speech in Brussels three weeks before retiring as Pentagon chief, Gates bristled with exasperation and contempt for European defence spending cuts, inefficiencies and botched planning, and read the riot act to an elite European audience. Nato faced a “dim, if not dismal” future, consigned to “collective military irrelevance”, Gates argued, warning for the first time that Nato was living on borrowed time and that a new young generation of US leaders could abandon the key pillar of transatlantic security established in 1949. “If current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders – those for whom the cold war was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in Nato worth the cost.” He attacked Europe’s conduct of the bombing campaign against Gaddafi in Libya, told the Europeans to forget any notions of pulling their troops out of Afghanistan in a piecemeal manner, and said that the big new factor raising questions about Nato’s survival was the “political and economic environment in the United States”. “The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country,” Gates said of the Anglo-French led campaign in Libya. “Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.” The US share of Nato military spending had soared to 75%, much more than during the cold war heyday when Washington maintained hundreds of thousands of US troops across Europe. The US taxpayer would not stand for it much longer – the US Congress and “the American body politic writ large” would rebel against spending “increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defence budgets”. Nato had degenerated into an alliance “between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of Nato membership but don’t want to share the risks and the costs”, Gates fumed. Noting that he was 20 years older than President Barack Obama, Gates said that Washington’s security guarantees to Europe, embodied in the Nato alliance, were fading because of generational change. “I am the last senior leader in the US government who is a product of the cold war,” said the former head of the CIA. His peers’ “emotional and historical attachment” to Nato was “ageing out”. “You have a lot of new members of Congress who are roughly old enough to be my children or grandchildren.” Generational change, economic hardship and European refusal to take responsibility for their own security were all feeding Nato’s decline and possible end. “The drift of the past 20 years can’t continue,” Gates said. “In the past, I’ve worried openly about Nato turning into a two-tiered alliance: between members who specialise in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the “hard” combat missions … This is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today. And it is unacceptable.” In March all 28 Nato members had voted for the Libya mission, he noted. “Less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission ,” he said. “Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can’t. The military capabilities simply aren’t there.” In a withering attack on the European defence establishment, he blasted allies for slashing defence budgets, but conceded there was little chance of reversing the trend. “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defence.” Nato US military US foreign policy United States European Union Libya Middle East Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
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Education secretary confident his office will be cleared of breach as sources suggest Labour feuding is behind the leak Michael Gove, the education secretary, is confident his office will be cleared of leaking the documents that implicate Ed Balls in a plot to remove Tony Blair after Whitehall sources indicated that an internal Labour feud is behind the breach of security. As the Cabinet Office released details of an investigation into the alleged leak from the education department, sources close to Gove accused Balls of demanding an inquiry to deflect attention from the Labour feuding. A source close to Gove told the Guardian: “Like with [former Haringey council children's services boss] Sharon Shoesmith , Ed Balls is pathetically trying to blame officials. He should ask friends how these things got leaked.” Gove fought back after Sir Gus O’Donnell sanctioned an investigation in the early hours of Friday morning into the leak of the private papers after a complaint from the shadow chancellor. Balls contacted David Bell, permanent secretary at the education department, late on Thursday night after the Daily Telegraph published the documents, which show Balls was the key figure in “Project Volvo”. It was designed to unseat Blair and prepare Gordon Brown for the Labour party premiership. Balls told the BBC on Friday: “The last time I saw them (the papers) was when they were on my desk in the [education] department. I don’t know how they were taken and got to the Telegraph.” The papers were not among correspondence sent to his Commons office after the election, by which time Balls had stood down as education secretary. Bell formally ordered the inquiry after consulting O’Donnell. Senior figures in Whitehall are highly sceptical of the shadow chancellor’s claim that he left sensitive documents, including annotations by the then prime minister, in a file on his desk in his department as he headed off to campaign in last year’s general election. The formal explanation of the inquiry indicated that O’Donnell has not accepted the claim by Balls that the documents were in the department, let alone that they were then leaked by an official or someone from the office of his successor, Gove. The prime minister’s spokesman explained the investigation, saying: “The Cabinet Office is looking into, first, whether these papers were in the possession of any department. And second, if so, whether there have been any breaches of document security within government.” One Whitehall source said of the Balls complaint: “This all has a familiar ring to it. Ed Balls loves inquiries.” The source speculated that Balls may have leaked the documents himself. “This has the feel of desk-clearing about it. Ed Miliband is struggling a bit, Ed Balls must be eyeing up the Labour leadership. So why not get all this out on his terms so this stuff is not released at a more difficult moment?” Gove and other senior Tories have a different view. They believe that a former member – or members – of the Brown circle leaked the papers to damage Balls at the moment that he is emerging as a pivotal figure in the Labour party. Greg Hands, parliamentary aide to George Osborne, tweeted: “Worth noting how leaky Labour has become under the Two Eds, with a steady stream of docs seemingly from both their offices in the last year.” Balls insisted this morning that the documents, from 2005 and 2006, do not show that he was plotting against Blair. He told the BBC: “After 2004 and then on there was a discussion between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and others, which included myself, about how we manage that stable and orderly transition. There was discussions, there was negotiations. “I lived through these years. I know what happens when people allow personalities and debates and fights to get in the way of the national interest. I was part of trying to hold things together in difficult times. There are important lessons to learn, people want to know that the Labour party has learned them. We have, 100%. That is why we are not going to be diverted by these kind of false and mendacious allegations. The idea that there was a plot or a coup is untrue and not justified by these papers.” In an attempt to implicate the Tories in the leak, he said the publication was “an attempt to take attention away from what is going on in this country”. Ed Balls Michael Gove Labour Politics past Gordon Brown Tony Blair Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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June 10, 2011 No Comment
The next time someone in the media wants to blame budget cutters for premature deaths , remember James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal, who unveiled another story filed under “Great Moments in Socialized Medicine,” once again from jolly old England and the London Daily Mail : Peter Thompson, 41, was left in a corridor for ten hours before someone noticed he had passed away. In a final act of indignity, hospital auxiliaries pulled his lifeless body across the floor in a manner his family described as like “dragging a dead animal.” The scenes which shame the NHS [National Health Service] were all captured on CCTV. Staff thought Mr. Thompson was merely drunk and left him to “sleep it off.” Yesterday a coroner condemned the death as “wholly preventable.” An inquest heard that the father-of-one, who had consumed a cocktail of drink and drugs, could have been saved had he received emergency treatment. The hospital’s accident and emergency department was just 200 yards away. Taranto couldn’t help himself: Would someone please ask former Enron adviser Paul Krugman to call the Thompson family and relieve their suffering by letting them know “these stories are false”?
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Justin Adams, whose aircraft crashed with Ukip leader on board, made death threats to the politician in aftermath of accident The pilot of a plane that crashed on election day, injuring Ukip leader Nigel Farage, was given a two-year community order today after a court heard his threats to kill the politician were “a cry for help”. Justin Adams, 46, of Faringdon, Oxfordshire, was flying a light aircraft with an election banner in tow on 6 May last year when it nosedived to the ground. Both men suffered “significant injuries” and were treated in hospital, Oxford crown court heard. Adams, a self-employed commercial pilot, lost work in the six months it took for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to investigate the crash. He was unable to have his plane repaired, as insurers would not pay out until the investigation had been completed. As well as being angry about the length of time the investigation took, Adams also felt resentment towards Farage, judge Mr Justice Saunders said. The pilot believed he had lost out on an opportunity to sell his story, having been advised not to speak to the press. He made threats to kill both CAA crash investigator Martin James and Farage, saying he had a gun and could “shoot to kill”, the judge told the court. In April, a jury in found Adams guilty of five counts of making threats to kill. Saunders said Adams was suffering from “a depressive order of moderate severity” triggered by the crash. He told the court: “He was also drinking to excess, which undoubtedly impaired his judgment and affected his behaviour. “I also accept, having heard the evidence in the trial, that to an extent these offences were a cry for help as well as an expression of anger and resentment at the events that had happened.” But he added: “There is nothing that could have justified these offences, and they were serious. Mr Adams made persistent threats over a three-day period that he was going to kill Martin James and Nigel Farage.” Adams had been in custody for six months before today’s sentencing. As part of the community order, he will be supervised for two years. The judge told him: “This has to be an end to all of these matters. Do you understand?”. Adams replied: “Yes.” UK Independence party (Ukip) guardian.co.uk
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Blogger Zeng Jinyan fears tighter restrictions on movements as dissident husband’s prison sentence comes to an end Hacked, harassed and now evicted, the wife of one of China’s best-known human rights activists fears she may be put under house arrest when her husband is freed from prison later this month. Zeng Jinyan has been told by police that the end of her husband Hu Jia ‘s three-and-a-half year jail term on 26 June could mean the start of tighter restrictions on her movements. Rather than have her three-year-old daughter live with them under house arrest, she is now planning to put her child into the care of family and close friends. Zeng, a blogger and activist, recently moved from Beijing to the southern city of Shenzhen in the hope of escaping the political pressures on her family that started long before her husband was convicted of “inciting subversion of state power”. But her hopes for a peaceful homecoming have been disrupted by public security officers, who have forced her landlady to evict her, put pressure on employers and raised the prospect of a resumption of the controls and monitoring she had to endure four years ago . Her Gmail account has been hacked several times. “Police officers told me it is true that we may have to live like we did before Hu Jia’s detention. He was under house arrest for almost four years before that,” Zeng wrote. “I must try to arrange something for my daughter so she is not under house arrest with me.” Release from prison does not mean freedom for many Chinese political prisoners due to the increasingly frequent use of so-called “soft detention” or “residential surveillance”. In the last year, the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, lawyer Zheng Enchong and Mongolian dissident writer, Hada, have been held incommunicado after their release. Huang Qi, an activist who campaigned against the shoddily built schools that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake, was released on Friday after a three-year sentence, but police banned his wife, Zeng Li, from picking him up from prison. She told the South China Morning Post: “I worry that they won’t bring him back but will hold him somewhere else – that has happened to some of our friends.” Many civil rights lawyers have also gone missing this year or been temporarily detained and tortured in arguably the harshest crackdown since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Foreign governments and human rights groups have raised alarms about extra-legal intimidation and detentions by state security, the police and hired thugs. But Beijing seems unwilling to listen. On Wednesday, the European parliament president, Jerzy Buzek, a former Solidarity activist in Poland, called on the Chinese authorities to investigate reports that Zeng and her daughter were threatened with an “unjust” eviction. Two days later, Zeng tweeted that her landlady had evicted her. State security passed on a message to Zeng: “We don’t want you to stay here.” She will leave Shenzhen next week. Before then, she has invited her friends and supporters to a farewell tea party, paid for with the money she received from her landlady for breaking their contract. Hu Jia China Human rights Blogging Censorship Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk
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Lenihan, who signed Ireland’s bailout package, had been battling pancreatic cancer since 2009 Ireland finance minister during the country’s fiscal crisis, Brian Lenihan, has died of pancreatic cancer, it was announced on Friday. Lenihan was returned as Dublin TD for the Republic’s main opposition party, Fianna Fáil, which sustained historic losses in the Irish general election last February. During his time as finance minister, the 52-year-old agreed the 100% bank guarantee and signed the bailout deal with the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank. He was a member of a political dynasty: his father, Brian, his brother, Conor, and his aunt, Mary O’Rourke, all served in Irish governments. Lenihan had been fighting cancer since December 2009. He had undergone intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment at the Mater hospital in Dublin. He had also served as minister for justice and minister for children in previous Fianna Fáil administrations. Since the party left government in March, he had continued to act as Fianna Fáil finance spokesman. He is survived by his wife and two children. Ireland Europe Financial crisis European Central Bank Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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Shadow chancellor says nothing in the ‘Project Volvo’ documents leaked to the Daily Telegraph amount to a conspiracy Ed Balls has denied taking part in a conspiracy to unseat Tony Blair following the 2005 general election, after a leaked series of papers showed the role he played in an operation to prepare Gordon Brown for the party leadership. Balls said there was nothing in the papers, leaked to the Daily Telegraph , that amounted to a plot. The leak, which appears designed to damage the shadow chancellor, has already reopened bitter party wounds. The documents show that Balls was the key figure in “Project Volvo”, designed to unseat Tony Blair and prepare Gordon Brown for the Labour party premiership. In an extraordinary development, Balls said he last saw the documents in a file on his desk in the education department a year ago when he was schools secretary. He contacted David Bell, permanent secretary at the education department, to say that the papers were not among correspondence sent to his Commons office after the election, by which time Balls had stood down. Bell ordered an inquiry after consulting the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell. The investigation will look into whether the current government was involved in the leaking of the papers, or whether a disgruntled former member of the Brown circle has decided to strike at Balls. The shadow chancellor is rapidly emerging as a key figure in the Labour party at a time when the leader, Ed Miliband, is struggling to assert his authority. Speaking to reporters outside his home, Balls said: “There is nothing here to justify claims of a plot.” One key document among a raft of internal papers to be published by the Daily Telegraph over the coming days shows that a meeting to discuss Brown’s leadership bid was held on 19 July 2005, a few months after Blair led the party to its historic third successive election win. The document, which is annotated by Balls, talks of a “GB Transition Storyline” under the heading “Leadership Election”. It says the key people in the process would be Balls, Ed Miliband, the pollster Deborah Mattinson and Spencer Livermore, a former Brown aide. Next to a finance section Balls has written in the figure £5m. Labour sources played down the significance of the leak, depicting it as “ancient history”. Other sources said that it was hardly surprising to discover that the Brown camp was making preparations for the post-Blair era after he made clear that the 2005 election would be his last as Labour leader. But the leaked papers provide documentary proof that Balls was the key figure in a highly organised operation to unseat a sitting prime minister. Brown sent Balls and other members of the group a series of memos in the autumn of 2005 highlighting Blair’s weaknesses. “This is a government not presidency,” he wrote. “Restoration of constitution and of trust. Leadership that gets on with the job … Trust depends on proper relationship between executive legislature and civil service, Labour the champion of the constitution … Need to redefine politics from spin/calculation/manoeuvre … No presidentialism.” In one passage, Brown wrote to Balls: “If we are to renew Labour, we will have to be as rigorous and brutal as we were in the creation of new Labour.” In another memo, Brown showed his frustration with Blair, who refused to give a clear date for the handover of power. “Politics is about shaping the debate as much as winning the debate itself … Recent weeks have shown how far we have moved backwards since the election … The press now write as if Blair is the only person who could ever win Labour any election. “From untrustworthy Blair v trustworthy Brown it is now reforming Blair v block-on-reform Brown. All his talk of Labour dominating the political landscape from the centre ground is not about re-establishing Labour but a self-promotion about his exceptionalism (and it is not rooted in what is actually happening). “The facts are: two-thirds think Britain is moving in the wrong direction. More than half think we lied over Iraq. Trust in politicians is half what it was 20 years ago.” The documents also provide a lighter insight into the Brown operation. Mattinson, the group’s pollster, dubbed the campaign to prepare him for the premiership “Project Volvo”. A 31-page document produced to “develop a narrative” for Gordon Brown’s vision compared him to the Swedish car make on the grounds that he was steadfast and robust. David Cameron, then recently elected Tory leader, was seen by voters as a more of a BMW. Brown’s team were advised to “demonstrate wider interests” focusing on his family, leisure and lifestyle. “Show humour, character, charm,” the document said. “More Richard and Judy opportunities; use Richard and Judy mode at all times.” Ed Balls Labour Tony Blair Gordon Brown Politics past Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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