I was once asked by client how to keep something quiet. I said: “Announce it.”
My logic was, and is, that the truth has a habit of getting out, so if you disclose something that you would rather keep under wraps in an innocuous way then when somebody digs up the dirt, you can point to your disclosure and say: “But we already told you about this.”
And so it is with Louise Haigh – the now ex-Transport Secretary. With her brightly coloured hair and forthright manner, she was a breath of fresh air in a very musty Starmer cabinet. She also believed in getting things done, which is good in a Department which defies its name by not moving at any speed.
However her failure to disclose publicly that she had a conviction for something to do with a stolen mobile phone – which to be honest is quite hard to understand – led to her defenestration.
There are two errors here – hers and Sir Keir Starmer’s.
Ms Hague should have disclosed this when she first became an MP in 2015. In not disclosing it there is a question of whether she misrepresented herself to the electorate – but I’ll let other opine on that. If the issue is an innocuous as she claims, then it would not have harmed her parliamentary career for it to have been out in the open.
She says she told Sir Keir of the conviction when she became Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in 2020. At this point, he should have insisted that this was disclosed. He didn’t. That was his failure and showed a lack of both guts and communications nous.
And so it festered until The Times and Sky News dug it up. Journalists with an undisclosed scandal are like a child with a noisy toy. They will make sure everyone hears it, causing the maximum inconvenience.
Thus Red Lou was undermined and now has time to ruminate about a lost phone and a lost career.
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