David Laws spots the Gordon Brown speech that wasn’t

1. Gordon Brown is scheduled to make a big education speech.

2. His spin doctors approach journalists in five different areas around the country giving them quotes from the speech which praise by name a local school.

3. Local newspapers around the country run positive stories (positive for both Gordon Brown and the local school).

4. Gordon gives his speech and, er…, doesn’t mention the five or use those quotes at all

Credit to David Laws for spotting this, as reported in The Times:

The episode began last Tuesday evening when Downing Street contacted a number of regional papers in Birmingham, Lancashire, Yeovil and Bradford with quotes from the Prime Minister, which the journalists claim they were told were going to be used in his keynote education speech the next day. But when Mr Brown actually stood up at Greenwich University he did not praise a single school by name …

Tom Bevan, a staff reporter for the Western Gazette, said: “They phoned on Tuesday and said one of your schools was going to be mentioned in a speech by the Prime Minister. They definitely said that it would be in the speech.”

A second journalist, who did not want to be identified, for fear of reprisal from No 10, said: “They told us the quotes mentioning the school would be in the speech. That is certain.”

Mr Laws said: “This looks like a quite outrageous and dishonest piece of news management from Gordon Brown – the Prime Minister who promised to end the era of spin.”