"Where it shabby is the fact that we've got to this place and that they have briefed anonymously against the cabinet secretary, saying it's not working. They've been doing this for a long time. This is a process that this government, I'm afraid, [it's] one of their biggest failings. You've seen it right from the start with Sue Gray, briefings against her, all the rest of it. This is the fundamental problem."
"Really good spads [special advisers] are really useful. I've worked with Ed Balls, Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell. If they're good, they understand their subject, they can make the the relationship between ministers and civil servants work a lot better. Bad special advisers turn out to be second rate PR people. [They] can be disastrous. You saw in the run up to the budget; it was a complete omnishambles from a comms point of view, whatever you think about t"
Keir Starmer is travelling to the Munich Security Conference while facing criticism for removing cabinet secretary Chris Wormald. The dismissal is notable because Wormald had been appointed by Starmer just over a year earlier. Former cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell described the treatment of Wormald as "shabby" and blamed anonymous briefings from the prime minister's special advisers for undermining the cabinet secretary. O'Donnell warned that such briefings are a chronic failing of the government and contrasted effective special advisers, who improve minister-civil service relations, with poor advisers who function as second-rate PR and can cause communications disasters.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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