Liam Byrne Is Wrong, According To His Own Spin Doctors

Whatever anyone else says about Gordon Brown's visit to Birmingham, Liam Byrne - the Minister for the West Midlands and Home Office Minister - insists it was a success.

He issued a statement claiming that the Cabinet heard the hopes and concerns of local people when they came to the city. The statement reads: "The Cabinet got a chance to hear what I hear in my day job every week."

To which some bright spark has added: "Does he hear these issues in his HO (Home Office) job?"

Presumably, this was a note added to a draft copy of the statement by someone in the press office, who remembered that Liam's main "day job" involves dealing with immigration at the Home Office, not representing the West Midlands.

But the Central Office of Information, the Government's PR factory, has simply gone ahead and published the question as part of the statement, along with Mr Byrne's words. It's currently up on their website (I suspect it will be taken down or fixed soon after I post this, however).

Anyone can make a mistake, not least journalists, so I don't want to go too far in mocking whoever was responsible for this one.

But it does add to the general impression that the Government is giving up the ghost. The spin machine has stopped working.

Update (On September 12): The press release I refer to has been removed and replaced by a new version without the error. We also ran a version of the corrected statement from Mr Byrne in today's Birmingham Post.