Mehdi Hasan

Mehdi Hasan’s polemical take on politics, economics and foreign affairs

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Fighting leaks

...the Apple way versus the Labour Party way.

By Mehdi Hasan Published 16 March 2012 12:55

Close allies Paul Staines (aka "Guido Fawkes") and Dan Hodges have been blogging all week about chaos, confusion and general goings-on inside the Labour Party based, it seems, on leaks from inside the party's soon-to-be-vacated Victoria HQ in central London.

Yesterday, former Labour special adviser Paul Richards tweeted:

Whoever the person at Labour HQ is who's giving @GuidoFawkes hourly updates, I wish they'd stop it. Whatever the beef, it won't fix it.

My new colleague Alex Hern reminds me of a story told by John Lilly, former CEO of Mozilla, about how the late Steve Jobs of Apple dealt with leakers:

One of the struggles we were going through when [Steve Jobs] came back was that Apple was about the leakiest organization in history -- it had gotten so bad that people were cavalier about it. In the face of all those leaks, I remember the first all company e-mail that Steve sent around after becoming Interim CEO again -- he talked in it about how Apple would release a few things in the coming week, and a desire to tighten up communications so that employees would know more about what was going on -- and how that required more respect for confidentiality. That mail was sent on a Thursday; I remember all of us getting to work on Monday morning and reading mail from Fred Anderson, our then-CFO, who said basically: "Steve sent mail last week, he told you not to leak, we were tracking everyone's mail, and 4 people sent the details to outsiders. They've all been terminated and are no longer with the company.

Tags: media  blogging  Labour

 
 

16 comments

smile@flv to quicktime's picture

Wed, 2012-11-07 10:47 — smile@flv to quicktime (not verified)

thanks for such a nice for such a nice post.

sam's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 13:44 — sam (not verified)

so...er...you think whistleblowers should be sacked?

Interesting.

Orange Booker's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 13:58 — Orange Booker (not verified)

All this would do would be to get people to transmit the information via other means. Also I imagine it would only exacerbate the well documented morale issues...

adnum1001's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 13:59 — adnum1001 (not verified)

I am not sure the Apple anecdote is a great model to follow - is this how you think organisations should treat their staff?

And more interestingly why are you not covering this story? The trauma of it all is worth reporting but more importantly so is the substance. Charles Allen is now running the Labour Party. That is incredible - the Labour party is in crisis; the Leader's office has imposed a model that sees the elected NEC sidelined. Please catch-up with some real journalism - or are you happy to leave it to Hodges and Guido?

Hobson's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 14:03 — Hobson (not verified)

Shouldn't a leading left-wing journal like the New Statesmen be reporting on the chaos in the Labour Party instead of moaning that someone else is?

The Old Man's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 14:11 — The Old Man

Mehdi old chap, have you no comment to make on the doings within the Labour Party? The leaks aren't really the story, now are they?

Dainase's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 14:22 — Dainase (not verified)

Mehdi, you do realise that any subsequent articles you write that contain leaked information will have you nailed as an utter hypocrite?

There are some major issues going on within Labour. It would be more to your credit to cover that rather than bark to the leaderships dogwhistle.

Steelyeyes's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 14:32 — Steelyeyes (not verified)

Your silence speaks volumes...

therealguyfaux's picture

Sat, 2012-03-17 02:44 — therealguyfaux (not verified)

What Jobs did, and what Labour should be doing, is to ask the "Nixon" question: what does the leaker know, and when do they know it? How do they know it? Is what is being leaked to Guido Fawkes of such widespread notoriety that it is incapable of being traced to its source? Then Labour have bigger problems than even Guido is reporting on, wouldn't you say? Whistleblowers in the true sense of the term hope to bring their organisations, or the good people in those organisations, to their senses and realise there's a problem to be addressed. Is this true of Labour, or are the leakers just mean petty little people looking to pay off old scores? Seeing as it's Labour we're talking about, I couldn't hazard a guess one way or the other, to tell the truth. At the rate they are going, they bid fair to be Her Majesty's Permanent Official Opposition if the Tories ever get their act together and don't need the L-D's, winning by a sufficient margin that even Labour/L-D is not possible.

MH's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 14:44 — MH (not verified)

*** Out Of Office Reply ****

Sorry I cannot reply sooner as I am at Cheltenham

colonel_hackney's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 17:34 — colonel_hackney (not verified)

American labour laws. The ability to hire and fire at will.
Is that what Medhi is proposing in the UK?

Awake!'s picture

Sun, 2012-03-18 23:23 — Awake!

Frank fields should start a new party of the left. He cares about people that's clear, and he's not extremist like the others now... Who reads Ed Balls piece about not caring whether it was his misses or him whobecame the next leader and believes it. So he wants people to vote for a bloke who dosen't want to be a leader? Or is it a cynical and really obvious lie? A touch of brownitus?? It's about as clear as his economic policy...

Will Hinch's picture

Sun, 2012-03-18 14:37 — Will Hinch (not verified)

check out my blog for some irreverent current affairs waffle
http://hinchysdailydose.blogspot.co.uk/

mcquade's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 19:38 — mcquade

Who gives a toss about the goings-on apart from Hodges and Staines (sad cases themselves) and their few thousand arse-licking acolytes. It's a complete non-story 99.999999% of the electorate.

John P Reid's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 21:19 — John P Reid (not verified)

BBc parliament channel is showing on Bank Holiday monday the 1992 election Medhi,soemthing your to young remember , Please watch it so you can get an idea of what you'll get to see 3 years from now, assuming that by not being new labour that can win the next election, after the 83 election tony benn said labour lost as it wasn't left wing enough, I hope medhi that Yvette cooper or Andy Burnham the leader after the election doens't have to fight Eds young mentors the way Kinnock had with Militant

John P Reid's picture

Fri, 2012-03-16 21:25 — John P Reid (not verified)

Yes Mcquade, 99,9% of the electorate dont' care what staines think, same way as 99.% of the electorate diddn't care the sheffield rally or John Prescott's private life, so that means about 60,000 of the electorate did, and for the record the last election was lost on 60,000 between the Tories winning an overall majority,

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