Been away

[onebyone]

So, just to get this straight, the cabinet (shadow at the time) will debate Nick Griffin, but not Alistair Campbell

Comments

[mrlloyd]

Wonder if they knew Laws was on the way out and were trying to avoid putting up a minister who'd resign 24 hours later...

Or maybe they're just terrified of Campbell. He can't be that scary though - my sister got an apology out of him once.

[onebyone]

I've just been watching some episodes of The Thick of It, so that sounds all too plausible.

I don't think they knew on Thursday night that he would have to resign. I wonder whether a decent performance on Question Time would have helped him stay. But if all they wanted was to get David Laws off, could they just have cancelled him for unspecified reasons and offered someone else? I suppose that might have looked suspect once the story broke Friday morning, so the alternative is that the government picked an unrelated fight with the BBC just as a cover story to avoid speculation that pulling him meant they were about to sack him over the Telegraph story. That's sneaky enough that I want to believe it...

[onebyone]

Come to think of it, maybe Question Time should have replaced Campbell with Peter Capaldi.