Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: Middle East, Premiership
Middle East
Asked what the Prime Minister was hoping to achieve on his shortly expected trip to the Middle East, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the Prime Minister had set out his thinking on this in his speech in Los Angeles. The Prime Minister was aware that the immediate focus was still on resolving the outcomes of the recent conflict and no doubt part of any visit would be to deal with such issues, for example the blockade. However, he fundamentally believed that people also needed to address the fundamental issues of the future of Lebanon and Palestine.
The process of re-engagement needed to begin again. Yes, at the moment there was anger and mistrust on all sides, but equally the Prime Minister believed that underlying that there was a recognition that we needed to fundamentally resolve this problem. This meant in the case of Palestine getting back to the road map. We had no illusions that this trip would be about starting negotiations now. It would be about starting a process of re-engagement with the process of negotiation. No matter how angry both sides were about recent events, no matter how much they mistrusted each other or others like ourselves we had to get people on all sides to recognise that they had to get back to the process of negotiation and start taking those first steps. This forthcoming trip would not be about big agreements. It would be about getting the process of people thinking how to restart the peace process.
Asked why the Prime Minister thought he was able to act as an honest broker, the PMOS said that if journalists reflected on what we had briefed on throughout the conflict they would recall the conversations that the Prime Minister had had, not just with the Israelis, but also with others in the Arab world, in particularly with the Lebanese Prime Minister. The Prime Minister believed that there was a desire to try and find a way back to the peace process and from his conversations with all sides he believed they thought it would be helpful if someone from the outside helped talk through the process of how to begin that process of re-engagement. Asked whether the Prime Minister was regarded as someone from the outside, the PMOS said that this was best answered by those in the region and those people that the Prime Minister had spoken to had said that it would be helpful to have someone like him help to try and restart the political process and we should respect the opinion of those people.
Premiership
Asked why Tom Watson was still a minister when he had signed an ultimatum for the Prime Minister to go, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister was planning to talk to Tom Watson later today. Asked whether Tom Watson would still be a minister later today, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister would speak to him later today so it was best for that to take place first before commenting. Asked whether the Prime Minister planned to speak to the Parliamentary Private Secretaries (PPS) that had signed the letter too, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister was intending to talk to Tom Watson. He was not aware of other conversations people would have to wait and see.
Asked if the Prime Minister would be speaking to the whip that had signed, the PMOS said that he thought that idea was based on a misconception. Asked whether the Prime Minister expected Cabinet Ministers to speak to their PPS’s, the PMOS said people should take this one step at a time. He was not going to go through each name. Asked whether the meeting with Tom Watson had been arranged at the Prime Minister’s request, the PMOS said that he tended not to get into that kind of detail, suffice it to say the Prime Minister would be talking to Tom Watson. Asked why the Prime Minister was planning to speak to Tom Watson, the PMOS said that was for the Prime Minister and Mr Watson to discuss first. Asked about details of the letter, the PMOS pointed out that those that had sent it said it was a private letter so he would not brief on it’s content.
Asked if we were acknowledging that the Prime Minister had received the letter, the PMOS said that Downing Street had acknowledged last night that a letter had been discovered on one of the office’s many fax machines late yesterday afternoon. Asked which room the fax had been in, the PMOS explained that we had many fax machines in the building and no doubt sending it to one at random had been part of the problem. Put that perhaps the party rebels were not modernisers if they were still using faxes, the PMOS declined to comment on what was clearly a party matter.
Asked whether Downing Street was looking into how The Sun story had got leaked, the PMOS said we could always spend time trying to figure such things out, but it was generally more useful to concentrate on issues where they could get a result. He did not know how it had come to light; perhaps The Sun’s political correspondent could help. Asked how the memo had got leaked, the PMOS suggest that this was an artful way to ask who was responsible for the memo. He would not get drawn into that as he had said all he intended to say on that matter yesterday.
Asked whether it was still the Prime Minister’s determination to make no further remarks on his future, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had set things out in his Times interview, David Miliband had said what he had on the radio yesterday, the PMOS had nothing further to add to the subject this morning. Asked whether Downing Street was happy with David Miliband’s timetable leading back to 31st May, the PMOS said that it was probably helpful to restate the position. We were not going to give a running commentary on dates. As far as he could ascertain that applied yesterday to The Sun. People may choose to contact us with dates but we were not going to comment on them. Any suggestion that this was in some way an authorised Downing Street operation was wrong.
Asked whether there had been discussion with the Chancellor about a timetable, the PMOS said, as was the usual rule, he did not brief on discussions between the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues. Asked whether the comments by Hilary Armstrong and David Miliband were helpful, the PMOS said, as he had yesterday morning, Cabinet colleagues were perfectly entitled to express their views as they had. The Prime Minister had said what he had and David Miliband and Hilary Armstrong had made their own assessments of what the Prime Minister’s words had meant. They had also said that they believed the Prime Minister would do what he had said.
Put that if we did not deny The Sun’s story it would become the received wisdom, the PMOS said that people had a choice to make in all of this, which was you either ticked off a right and wrong for every date or you do what Downing Street had consistently done and not offer a running commentary. Downing Street would stick to the latter. Even though this might allow journalists to suggest that we had not confirmed nor denied The Sun’s specific date if people looked back we had not confirmed any specific dates at any time all the way through. So we were being consistent on that matter. Asked by CNN to sum up what the Prime Minister intended to do between now and next May that made it worth hanging on against all these pressures, the PMOS said that even though he had just come back from his holiday, he would not buy into the implicit attempt to draw him into a commentary on a date. He was too old a dog to walk into that one. However, the PMOS said he would, having extracted that part of the question out, answer the other bit of the question in his own words.
The Prime Minister intended to get on with the agenda that the government had been elected to address. As he had already shown the Prime Minister wanted to keep moving forward on the energy review and keep momentum going following the pensions review. He would keep things moving forward on education and health reforms, just as he had always done. He would also keep things moving forward on migration, an issue he had acknowledged that people had a variety of concerns about on all sides, such as those heard from the CBI last week. Likewise in foreign policy he wanted forward movement on the Middle East and Northern Ireland. There was a deep agenda of serious issues to be addressed and in addition to that the Prime Minister would continue to deliver his lectures as he had done yesterday. The next one would be on science.
Put that people should be more honest about what David Miliband had been doing yesterday and that he had licence from No10, the PMOS said that he would not bristle too much at the use of the word honest. As he had already said the David Miliband had decided to go on the Today Programme himself. Journalists may smile at that but it was factually the case. Asked if there were a date in mind whether Cabinet colleagues would be consulted, the PMOS said he suspected that was being ask to give a commentary on dates, but he had already made clear he would not be doing so.
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