Vince Cable, Oliver Letwin and the missing "full transcript"
Undercover journalists expose what politician really thinks … and it turns out to be what we all thought he thought anyway. Though it’s understandable why the Daily Telegraph has splashed the story, the news that there is lots of debate within the coalition over policies is hardly new or surprising.
Certainly there’s some embarrassment for Vince, but I suspect Oliver Letwin won’t be too overjoyed at being splashed across the media as one of the most regular Lib Dem allies in coalition debates.
Given that there is no hint of an allegation about laws or rules being broken, I’m rather uneasy about the way the Telegraph used two undercover journalists to pretend to be someone else in order to sting a politician – even if it does result in the wonderful irony of a newspaper running a story criticising an MP for being too honest. I’m sure the “More dishonesty is needed now to make Britain great again!” leader will be along any moment now…
That uneasiness is strengthened by the Telegraph‘s editing of what is describes as a “full transcript” of the incident. It’s nothing of the sort – not only missing out part of what Vince Cable said but also missing out all the words spoken by its own undercover journalists. Similarly the audio version has been edited to remove parts of the exchange. Odd.
Letwin regularly jokes about being a closet Liberal and having the mick taken our of him by his Tory colleagues.
I made pretty much the same points earlier.
What passes for journalism these days is nothing compared to the professional, wise, illuminating art practised by the likes of Anthony Howard and Brian Hanrahan, both of whom will be sadly missed.
Oliver Letwin is highly intelligent and a trained philosopher – neither of which is readily compatible with conservatism. If you read David Laws’ book you can see that Letwin’s been reasonable from the outset.