Murky letters… and is there enough room at No 10?

Norman Lamb will be moving into the deputy prime minister’s office to take up a role as Nick Clegg‘s in-house political adviser. He’ll sit in on cabinet meetings as an observer. Quite a few people have said they’ll be doing the same… No. 10 may have to build a spectator stand round the room at this rate.
I hear that Steve Hilton is working with his Lib Dem counterpart John Sharkey and others to lash together a “narrative of government,” a sort of mission statement which should become the central text for policy and presentation.

Elsewhere work continues, with the help of civil servants, on fleshing out the 11-point coalition agreement into a bigger document covering all ministries. As Andrew Stunell, a member of the original Lib Dem negotiating team says, there are 20 departments with 20 to 40 areas of policy interest in each department and all of them need some sort of accord. That document is expected to be published soon.

The Lib Dem alternative front bench, sitting in the Commons where Dennis Skinner and his pals used to sit, looked mildly menacing. There is concern amongst Lib Dems that the party has no clear idea how it will, like a lunar module, detach itself form the coalition mother-ship come a general election and rediscover its distinctive identity.

On Labour’s benches, there’s some anger that the NEC has come up with a timetable that means candidates have to rustle up 33 nominating MPs’ signatures by Thursday of next week.

There’s suspicion that this was a timetable dreamt up to make sure that Jon Cruddas didn’t have time to get enough signatures to stand. He said in a Guardian article that he wasn’t standing anyway but this means that any other non-cabinet candidate will have his or her work cut out getting enough momentum to stand and challenge the expected big four – the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls (expected to annoucne his candidacy tomorrow) and Andy Burnham (still taking soundings).

At today’s NEC, the timetable for a September announcement of a new leader at the Labour Conference was never really in doubt. The fact that an earlier contest would be competing for attention with the World Cup in South Africa was a final clincher.

Lot of stories whirring around tonight about letters of direction requested by government accounting officers. For those with an appetite for this, you can see the official description of what is involved here.

A senior civil servant, usually the permanent secretary, asks to be ordered to do something. That can be because he or she smells a rat and thinks murky politics is afoot.

It can be because he or she thinks that something is not value for money (the two can overlap). Or it can be because of the awesome magnitude of a decision and the inevitable risks involved – civil servants required a letter of direction before signing off on the asset protection scheme (wouldn’t you?).

Here are the two 2010 letters of direction we already knew about from a PQ released earlier this year. One relates to asbestos, the other to merging councils.

There are two new letters of direction that have come to light for 2010. One relates to a war memorial in Basra and the other one to Blackpool pier. You can see how the latter one – afraid I don’t have the details – is in prime marginals country and might have raised an eyebrow on political grounds. The former one? Seems unlikely.