A great bit of quote-hunting from Paul Waugh, who’s tracked down a source to back up Sue Cameron’s Chancellor Balls story from yesterday. The testimony he’s got is a peach, with the best bit coming right at the end. Here it is in full:
Apparently, Balls did indeed clear his diary in those fateful last couple of weeks to sign off the white paper. My source tells me that the minister called his senior civil servants together and told them he was “leaving” [to become Chancellor]. “He didn’t allow the faintest hint of doubt,” the source says.
“His civil servants had been trying to get him to actually pay it his full attention for months and the list of things needing his attention had grown and grown.
“EB wanted to make sure it was ‘his’ white paper so spent quite a bit of time over those last few days he had in the DCSF, clearing some of the radical stuff that had been prepared (both by DCSF officials and by the PMSU) and rejecting other bits because they would harm his chances of being seen as a ‘Labour man’ by the union types he has been cosying up to.
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