Sally Morgan’s claim this morning that No10 is trying to purge non-Tories from quangos doesn’t ring true to me. Last time I checked, Team Cameron was still putting Labour types into quangos, oblivious to the game that Labour has been playing so long for so well.
Exhibit A is the egregious Chris Smith, a former Labour Culture Secretary who has somehow ended up chairing the Environment Agency (whose incompetence can now be seen covering 23,000 acres of the in Somerset Levels). In the Labour years, the Labour Party was very good at deploying its own people to charities and quangos – making a good government-in-exile to attack a Tory government for cuts, etc.
I admire Sally Morgan, a former teacher and proven reformer, and regard her as an honourable exception to the template of a clueless politician being given a safe berth in a quango with a broad remit to just make trouble for a new government. But
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