A huge stuff up
The Guardian reports:
When Keir Starmer announced a shake-up in his No 10 operation last month he hoped to put an end to the missteps of his first few months in office. But an embarrassing error by Downing Street this weekend demonstrates how many pitfalls there are for a new government still learning the ropes.
In a press release on Friday, Downing Street said five new freeports would be announced in the budget. The Guardian and other outlets covered the news, which was given first to reporters who had travelled with Starmer to Samoa for the Commonwealth summit. Both the prime minister and his aides answered questions on the policy they had unveiled.
Two days later it emerged that there would be no new freeports. The Financial Times reported that the announcement, which had baffled officials and port executives, was wrong. Instead the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will unveil new customs sites within three existing freeports – a comparatively minor move, though it will make Humber freeport operational for the first time. …
What has baffled everyone in Westminster is how such a major mistake could be made when government announcements – especially those related to the budget – go through a lengthy signoff process involving a large number of people. “You could see this mistake happen if it was the PM saying it and getting the language wrong,” one former special adviser remarked. Instead it was at the top of a No 10 press release.
Having worked in a PMs Office, I find it hard to understand how you can accidentally announce five new freeports in a media release. This would be signed off by multiple officials in ministerial offices and agencies. It does suggest either incompetence or very bad systems.
I do have some experience with the more common experience where a Minister or spokesperson announces something in an interview and gets the details wrong. In one election a spokesperson announced something that was not agreed policy, and it was reasonably significant.
This posed a problem, as announcing the next day the spokesperson was wrong would dominate the day, so would be a bad news day a few days before the election.
As the campaign committee discussed how to correct the spokesperson’s remarks to align with the policy, I suggested why didn’t we just align the policy with the spokesperson. MPs said that it wouldn’t be possible to get the policy amended in time as would have to go through caucus committee, caucus, policy committee, board etc. I clarified that I meant that I just changed the policy on the website. MPs nervously looked around and asked if that was possible. I said sure – could do it in five minutes.
There was a long silence, and then the campaign chair said “OK I think we can move onto the next item”, which I took to mean they didn’t want to explicitly say I should do it, but did want me to do it!