The Foreign Office has denied the existence of any such memo as that allegedly leaked to the Daily Telegraph, which has now published the full text. Reading it, I can say for sure it is not an FCO memo. That has led some to assume this means it is a Scottish Office memo. But there is a problem here.
Firstly, if the Scottish Office – or any other government department – made a record of a conversation with the French Consul-General, they would undoubtedly have copied it to the FCO. Particularly as the FCO is mentioned and a number of overseas visits and an international negotiation are discussed. If this were a genuine minute, the FCO would undoubtedly have a copy. If the FCO denies it exists, that means there was no such memo made in the Scottish Office and distributed in the ordinary channels.
Secondly, as I stated, the media’s claim that it was a protocol requirement for the French Embassy to report such conversations to the FCO was a complete fabrication. Not only is there no such requirement, it would be contrary to normal diplomatic practice. That is even more true with the Scottish Office. It is unthinkable that the French Consul-General would report those kind of confidential comments from Nicola Sturgeon to the Scottish Office.
If Embassies reported everything people told them to their host governments, nobody would tell the embassy anything. Indeed this episode has already damaged the French Embassy, because it casts a slur upon the discretion and confidentiality which is essential to operate as a diplomat. It may well be that driving a wedge between the SNP and the French Embassy was part of what the security services sought to achieve.
It damages the French Embassy, it damages the SNP, and it damages Miliband by repeating the meme about his being weak and unfit. Those would all seem good results to the security services. Only Miliband has been stupid enough to go along with it.
It seems to me the overwhelming probability is that this document, whether it purports to be a FCO or Scottish Office document, was originated by the Security Services, possibly with the active collusion of someone in the Scottish Office, or equally possibly without their knowledge. Whatever it purported to be, it never entered the normal civil service distribution systems, as the FCO would have a copy, and it would have raised alarm bells all over the place as seriously weird and improbable. It is in that sense a fake, even if it were physically produced inside the Scottish Office. Its purpose was to be leaked to the media and influence the election.
Craig, the link to the full text does not seem to work at the moment.
Kind regards,
John
You need to remove the characters http// from the beginning of your link. Here’s the correct link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/SNP/11515276/Revealed-Full-text-of-Nicola-Sturgeon-memo.html
J
“Craig, the link to the full text does not seem to work at the moment.”
Darned MI5 must have sabotaged it.
Should be a colon after http.
The real question is why The Telegraph waited to publish it now, whether it is true or not.
Quite clear, the newspaper waited to see who won the debate before publishing it.
Reminds me of the Zinoviev letter.
And, of course, the French want everyone to forget about that plane crash.
“Quite clear, the newspaper waited to see who won the debate before publishing it.”
Everybody won the debate. Everyone claimed victory and four opinion polls gave four different results and people just picked the one they liked most.
It looks too amateur for a security services job. To be honest, it looks amateur for a Conservative Central Office job. How could a “Scottish political editor” run this story without realising that it just didn’t ring true, unless of course he was involved with the original deceit?
This has Jim Murphy written all over it. If it was not a Scottish Labour fabrication why on earth would Miliband insist that he is not Prime Ministerial material in the eyes of Scotland’s most popular politician? As to the Security Services, Murphy is very likely to be one of their longest serving officers.
Well, given that the French Consul General stated explicitly in an interview on Sky News that the French Ambassador met with “both the Secretary of State for Scotland, Mr Carmichael, and Ms Sturgeon” (note the order of precedence there) and given the LibDem eagerness to “prove” that the SNP secretly want the Tories to win… I don’t think we even need even look as far as MI5/MI6 here. It could well have been someone like LibDem “bruiser” Carmichael who inserted that particular nugget of LibDem partyline-groupthink into the conversation. And just let the media run with it.
The S.N.P. Membership went up by 2000 during and after the debate so there is no dought who won the debate
Come off it.
There is of course not a single shred of evidence that this is anything other than an authentic record of conversation. Talk of MI5 Zinoviev-style machinations is self-promoting mischievous drivel, as you well understand.
My sense is that it is 100% a record written in the Scottish government system somewhere. The focus is very much on immediate detailed Scottish business, and it is the French CG (In Edinburgh) doing the talking: no French CG would be bothering to brief someone in Whitehall on such matters.
It probably got copied to the FCO and other parts of Whitehall as a routine matter as some of the substance has an FCO or foreign policy angle. Maybe someone there copied it to No 10 or an FCO SPAD and the rest is history.
Craig – Grateful for your views on the role of the Telegraph – willing dupes or accessories to a crime? Fortunately or unfortunately, the Murdoch “News of the World” solution – sudden death – is hardly an option open to the Barclay Brothers in fortress Brecqhou.
UPSTAGING NICOLA STURGEON!
Election 2015: Jim Morphy denies ‘preferring Cameron’
The S.N.P. Gained 2000 new members during and after the debate so there is no doubt who won the debate
Like most of the ordinary Scottish electorate, I don’t know as much about the Intelligence Services as I should do, but this whole smearfest had a very amateur approach and result. I think the Scotland Office has already lined up a fall-guy to be outed (and moved swiftly on to another post so his pension is not affected) to take responsibility for this imaginary memo.
It doesn’t really matter which of the UK Government departments is responsible for this propaganda, but only that we have all come to realise that they are all singing from the same hymn sheet.
I think it might be important that we challenge the UK civil service as to their impartiality, and the French Diplomatic services as to their willingness to be party to their apparent lack of protest to being called liars by UK government media.
If you want to see plenty of self-promoting drivel, you could do worse than going and having a look at Mr Charles Crawford’s website:
http://charlescrawford.biz/
“In case you’re all wondering, my eBook Speechwriting for Leaders is coming along very nicely. A bold and amusing cover is being designed (every e-Book needs a bold and amusing eCover) and the substance is entering the layout and final edit phase.
The problem for any great artist with any work of art is knowing when to Just Stop…”
Yes, indeed.
Kind regards,
John
It reminds me of the eventual fate of Willie McRae,but that maybe about to change,as a petition, demanding a FAI into Mr McRae’s death,is being signed up at 1300 signatures,a day.
Mr McRae,was found shot in the head,in a car crash,with a gun,a far distance away from his body.
His briefcase was missing (allegedly containing damning information on Westminster).
Mr McRae,had at the time expressed concerns,that Special Branch were,shadowing him,constantly.
Had Mr Mcrae died at his place of work,or under arrest,or in prison,a FAI would’ve been mandatory.
If you wish to sign the petition,the website is
38degrees.org.uk
@Pam McMahon
4 Apr, 2015 – 3:11 pm
I agree that this smearfest does come across as being very amateurish, but might that be because ‘they’ can’t find much to pin on Nicola Sturgeon?
Front page of today’s (print edition) Daily Mail, which carries a big pic of Nicola Sturgeon:
MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN BRITAIN
Oh my, Fletcher School foreign agent CHARLES CRAWFORD lends his flyweight reputation to the authenticity debate. That proves it was the knuckledraggers. Their clever ruse obscured what the Scottish splittists really want:
– Restore UK universal jurisdiction in the interest of the future accountability principle of the Nuremberg Judgment;
– Enlist the Fondazione Basso to expose NATO impunity and miscarriage of justice for clandestine armed attack on the civilian population;
– Formalize and secure the rights of the Scottish people.
– By all means let Miliband lead the British pedophiles to Yugoslavian-scale dismemberment.
So when this story broke, why did the Telegraph interview Willie Rennie, of all people?
Might the Scottish Office under Carmichael not still be behind this and be a law unto itself?
Thanks for a note of sanity Mr Crawford – if you want another conspiracy theory to throw into the mix then what about someone in the Scottish Office being sympathetic to that tendency within the SNP who have suffered at the hands of the control freakery of Mr and Mrs Sturgeon and actually prefer a Conservative Government as they think longer term it will further the cause of independence.
The real issue is how a second hand and inaccurate account of this meeting – which was not even attended by the UK government – came to be written by a UK Government civil servant and then leaked to Tory-supporting newspapers at the start of a general election campaign.”
Said Miss Sturgeon.
Mr Coffinier admitted that he had talked “in broad terms” to the UK Government’s Scotland Office about the ambassador’s visit, but denied saying that Ms Sturgeon had expressed a preference about the election outcome and said he could not recall any casual comment which could have been interpreted in this way.
“I didn’t say that,” the consul-general told Sky News. “I do not know where this comes from, because it is certainly not in my report that anyone gave any preference.”
Said Mr Coffinier.
The memo itself allws for the possibility of the critical part being mistaken, of the meaning having been ‘lost in translation’. This could be a case of international Chinese whispers, and a reason for minutes for important meetings being done by professionally trained secretaries, to avoid just such a critical loss of information. Bring back secretarial schools and shorthand!
My substantive take on the full text as published by the Telegraph: obviously a real memo or an extract from one.
But NB it does not follow that even if the memo accurately records what was said on the phone, the Sturgeon/ambassador meeting said precisely the same! We are dealing with a summary of a summary
#hearsay
http://charlescrawford.biz/2015/04/04/that-sturgeon-miliband-memo-analysed/
Election 2015: Nicola Sturgeon hits out at ‘dirty tricks’
1 hour ago
1133 comments
Nicola Sturgeon “absolutely, 100%, categorically” denies claims she said she would prefer a Tory government
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has accused Whitehall of “dirty tricks” after a report emerged claiming she told a French diplomat she would prefer David Cameron in No 10 over Ed Miliband.
The Daily Telegraph published a civil service memo claiming Scotland’s first minister privately said Labour’s leader was not “PM material”.
Ms Sturgeon said in a tweet the story was “categorically, 100% untrue”.
She called for an “urgent inquiry” into the circumstances of the leak.
French officials said she did not express a preference for PM.
But Labour called the report “damning” and said that even if it was not true the “SNP are happy to see another Tory government”.
Conservative leader David Cameron warned against a “coalition of chaos” between Labour and the SNP.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32177315
It doesn’t say
1. Who wrote it
2. Who the recipent(s) were
3. What form it took. Was it an email?
4. Which department it was sent from
The only thing we have is the date, and that was nearly a month ago.
I think it is a fake, or doctored. The sting has been added on at the end. The last sentence is a dead give away. It is tabloidy, offering low brow spin, not information, unlike the rest of the message.
‘I have to admit that I’m not sure that the FM’s tongue would be quite so loose on that kind of thing in a meeting like that so it might well be a case of something being lost in translation’.
1. Note that the last bit, ‘it might have been lost in translation’ sounds like a pathetic attempt at covering whoever added the final paragraph’s back.
2. The alleged conversations of this ‘truncated’ meeting took place in the ambassador’s flawless English. Anybody in the know, a genuine civil servant, would know this. This just sounds fake. It’s been added on by somebody. Coffinier also speaks flawless English. He would not have misunderstood his own ambassador whether they spoke in French or English, and he would not have lost something in translation passing this on to whoever wrote this memo. In fact, he categorically denies that this was their conversation.
My conclusion is that the memo is genuine up to the point where it says the ambassador held a truncated meeting with FM. The rest, purporting to be Nicola’s opinion about the election, has been added on by another hand.
There is a marked difference in tone between the diplomatic and factual information of the message up to that point and the final paragraph which is very tabloidy.
‘They’ must be getting desperate to have brought the reserves in. It is a long time since Charles Graham Crawford Esq CMG graced this blog with his presence.
He can tweet too.
https://twitter.com/charlescrawford
CHARLES CRAWFORD, old man Gullion’s Western-Oriented Gentleman, points out that the document is real, just full of crap. Anyway, Hannigan’s voyeurs paid no attention when political gossip came up. They were only spying to try and keep Tony Blair out of Scheveningen.
The crux of the matter.
Election 2015: Thousands attend anti-Trident rally in Glasgow
58 minutes ago
Both the SNP and the Greens have said they will vote at Westminster to scrap Trident subs
Thousands of protesters have taken part in a rally in Glasgow, calling for Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons programme to be scrapped.
The protest was organised by the Scrap Trident coalition, as the focus on the general election campaign trail in Scotland turned to nuclear weapons.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon addressed the rally in George Square.
Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens and Labour election candidate Katy Clark also spoke.
A police estimate suggested about 2,500 people attended the rally, while organisers said the figure was closer to 4,000.
The Bairns Not Bombs demonstration is the first of three against the nuclear weapons in the run-up to the general election.
The Clyde-based submarines that carry Trident are due to reach the end of their operational lives within the next decade.
However, the UK government has yet to make a final decision on their replacement.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32181463
I’m struck by the fact that it would be relatively easy to those in certain circles to ascertain the identity of the author and hence the recipient. One can therefore conclude that this, if genuine, was not leaked by either the writer or the addressee.
And maybe her stand on this too.
Jewish leaders in fears over anti-semitism | Herald Scotland
http://www.heraldscotland.com/…/jewish-leaders-in-fears-over-anti-semitism.2...
16 Aug 2014 – Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign deny this and, in return, accuse pro-Israelis … And Nicola Sturgeon, the Deputy First Minister, was today …
Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter: “Today’s Telegraph names the 132 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces since 7 July. This has to stop.”
https://twitter.com/nicolasturgeon/status/491835581912326145
22 Jul 2014 –
Scots protest over Palestinian aid convoy killings – STV News
news.stv.tv/…/180523-fears-for-scots-onboard-palestinian-aid-convoy/
31 May 2010 – Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon expressed her “deep sadness” at the loss of life upon the peace flotilla. She added: “My primary concern …