Lipstick on a pig?
News that Stephen Carter is to take over as grand vizier at Downing Street has been greeted by the usual ‘friends’ telling the world how capable, energetic, visionary etc etc he is. All such appointments are greeted in this way until the gloss wears off and the individual is revealed in fact to be querulous, lecherous, paralysed by indecision, and of unsound mind.
The PM will be glad to know that Salieri has some (very limited) contact with Carter and on this basis can state that he seems to suffer from none of these vices. Although his early life was blighted by being a lawyer, he recovered to be a rather good CEO at J Walter Thompson and – although it pains one to admit this – did a decent job at Ofcom. But, as his decision to go into government indicates, he has always had an eye on the main chance: he was allegedly infamous for the rather obvious way he angled for a senior media job during his later months at Ofcom.
Just a couple of thoughts on it all, though: can there be any pretence any longer that Ofcom is an independent, evidence-based, apolitical regulator? Its former CEO is now the top spinner for GB; its current one, a former policy wonk at No 10, himself renowned for being ‘sensitive to political issues’/’completely in the pocket of the government’ (delete according to taste). No wonder DCMS resents Ofcom’s apparent dominance over media policy.
On the bigger picture, what Carter is not is a media handler like Alastair Campbell. He’s more like a Jonathan Powell and hence his short-term impact is going to be very limited. Maybe Brown really believes that the key to restoring his crumbling political fortunes lies in that far-famed land of plenty ‘the long term’.
But Salieri’s judgment has never wavered. Brown is psychologically and presentationally unequipped to be PM and he could have a combination of Aristotle, Karl Rove and Niccolo Machiavelli running his team and the result would be the same. Curtains.