Yet another one of Gordon Brown’s ‘octet’ – the eight advisers named in The Spectator three years ago – is moving on. Michael Ellam is finally on his way back to HM Treasury and I wonder why. Has he just got fed up, like Tom Watson? Or is he being sent to HMT as Brown’s enforcer, to make sure it doesn’t put up a fight when No10 instructs it to spew out more dodgy figures? After all, the newly confident Alistair Darling is up for telling hard truths, and that’s something No10 won’t appreciate.
But I suspect that, finally, Ellam is no longer in the mood for No10. He always was an unlikely praetorian. As a civil servant he used to work for Ken Clarke, and under Brown specialised in economics. His move to the be HMT press chief was itself unusual.
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