Government Communications - Time to stop the spin

ONCE upon a time, some 70 years or so ago, politicians confronted with a reporter’s notebook or a news crew’s microphone were men — and they were in the main, men — of few words, almost always carefully chosen ones.

Britain’s post-war Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, the one who built the welfare state, was utterly without ego. A master of diffidence, he was asked by a journalist if he had a comment to make on Labour’s general election campaign or anything he’d like to tell the country. “No,” was his answer.