It was Yes Minister which joked that open government is ‘a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you can have government.’ And it seems that the Sunak regime has now taken that maxim to new limits in its bid to avoid anything that might cause the slightest embarrassment to King and country.
Back in February, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport released an official ‘Coronation Celebration Playlist’ to get everyone in the spirit. It put together an official 27-track playlist on Spotify as a suggested street party soundtrack. Among those tracks included were Come Together by the Beatles, Starry Eyed by Ellie Goulding and George Ezra’s Dance All Over Me. But one song that was subsequently removed was the Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) after complaints were received about the band’s republican views.
Intrigued, Mr S wondered which other songs had been purged from the government-approved list. A Freedom of Information request was sent in February to the department, requesting ‘Internal correspondence relating to the Coronation Celebration Playlist posted on the DCMS Spotify account’ and ‘the names of songs and artists removed from draft versions of it.’
Clearly such seditious requests are frowned upon by the mandarins in Whitehall. For three months on, the department has now rejected the request in its entirety, on the grounds that it would risk ‘prejudice to the conduct of public affairs.’ Indeed, so nervous were the officials about this request that they have got Lord Parkinson, a minister of the Crown, to sign a certificate preventing the publication of this deeply dangerous information.
Appropriately enough, Chris Brown’s Transparency wasn’t one of the songs on the playlist either…
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