Byrne: letter was a joke

Former Treasury minister Liam Byrne says a note to his successor was meant as a joke.

Byrne had left behind “a one-sentence letter which simply said ‘Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left’, which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting,” David Laws, the new Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, told a press conference this morning.

Liam Byrne said: “The letter was a joke from one chief secretary to another. I do hope David Laws’ sense of humour wasn’t another casualty of the coalition deal.”

I hear that the outgoing Chancellor Alistair Darling was much more discreet in his note and also left a bottle (no revolver) in the Chancellor’s flat.