Project Volvo (UK) leaked documents show political conspiracy in the houses of parliment

Leaked documents provide proof of involvement of ED Balls and Ed Miliband in plan to prepare Gordon Brown for premiership and over run Tony Blair out of the office..

Project Volvo – the codename for the Labour coup to replace Tony Blair with Gordon Brown, as leaked to the Daily Telegraph – confirms the worst suspicions the nation had about the last Labour prime minister.
It may be long after the events have faded from the memory, but embarrassingly for Ed Miliband, he and the coup's other ring leaders, Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander, are the ones looking for high office at the next general election.

It is little wonder that they are running for cover, dismissing the documents as history. They reveal what insiders like the Mole knew all along - that they were more interested in grabbing power from Blair than how to use that power if they won it.
The plot began on July 19, 2005, less than a fortnight after the terror attacks on London. Balls had only become an MP at the election in May.

A memo that day sets out the leadership campaign group consisting of six people close to Gordon Brown - Balls, Miliband [Ed], Alexander, Sue Nye, Spencer Livermore and Ian Austin. They formed a "small group" which was given tasks by Brown.

Sarah Brown, Gordon's wife, was also asked to persuade senior women in Labour to back her husband.
The group was to develop a 'GB transition storyline' - a narrative to describe to gullible voters why Gordon Brown was to be the heir to Blair. Sue Nye was tasked with bringing in 'New MPs/blood/women' to support his leadership campaign. Others needing a 'role' included Neil Kinnock and Alistair Darling, both cheerleaders for Brown when he took over from Blair unopposed.

The Project Volvo name came from focus group meetings organised by Deborah Mattinson, Brown's pollster.
In February 2006, she sent a memo to Brown headed Project Volvo. It said voters saw David Cameron as a "Sports car, BMW," but they saw Brown as a "Volvo, British Rover".
Mattinson said the "line on DC [David Cameron]" should be to attack his "posh background". However, this line of attack was "for others, not GB".

That memo was to have a lasting effect on Brown's coterie of supporters. Ed Miliband will be accused of continuing to use its findings - especially that Cameron is seen as 'posh' - to attack the Prime Minister at Westminster on his personal image rather than his policies.

But the most revealing memo is from Blair to Brown setting out Blair's proposals for a smooth transition. On it, at the top of the first page, Brown scrawled (above) in the heavy felt tip pen he habitually used because his eyesight was so bad "SHALLOW, INCONSISTENT, MUDDLED..."
The letter from Blair says: "You (understandably) want me to go now.
"You need to be the candidate of continuity and change. The second will be

"The first, however, rests on a smooth transition. Critical to that is not merely the absence of disunity in the handover; it is also the visible, clear demonstration that the person who most embodies NL [New Labour], ie me, is working hand-in-hand with the successor."
Blair suggests a five-point deal that includes Brown leading on party reform, democratic renewal and work to tackle Islamic extremism. The pair would work together and Blair would then announce he would leave in summer 2007.

Blair concludes that "in return" he would need "full help and co-operation" in getting through his own reform agenda: NHS, schools, respect, welfare and energy.
He ends with a warning: "Whilst I remain PM, the final decision has to be mine; and that cannot provoke a breakdown. I will try, at all costs, to avoid disagreement, but there can't be stalemate if it happens."
In a draft of a deal document, which he prepared for Blair to sign, Brown wrote: "I propose the following: Across a wide range of areas you [Brown] are put in charge of future working groups beyond economic policy so that Labour with you leading is seen as party able to meet big challenges of future."
"You [Brown] will however set out with my full support and that of my team, the agenda for beyond 2007 and for the next parliament."

Blair rejected Brown's draft. Brown hit back by letting loose his main attack dog Ed Balls on Blair, ordering Balls to take a "brutal" approach to cleanse the Labour Party of Blair's influence.
In launching an internal war on Blair to get him out, Brown made it clear in other memos that he regarded Blair as a lightweight whose obsession with spin destroyed trust in politics. He used the perception of "lies" over the Iraq War ruthlessly to lever Blair out of Number Ten.

The 30 memos and secret papers from the Brown camp leaked to the Daily Telegraph are now the subject of a leaks inquiry in Whitehall. It appears that the box of documents was held back by a civil servant following Labour's exit from office last year and passed to the media.

Whoever did it should be knighted. He has done us all a big favour. For it reveals what a bunch of power-mad zealots were grouped around Brown, some of whom remain in the power game today

Some links below.

www.guardian.co.uk...

www.google.com...

uk.news.yahoo.com...

Well Brown & Blair, served the same agenda as well as DC, so you've got to ask yourself if this is controlled opposition ?

reply to post by DEV1L79


Gave you a S+F. Always had arousing suspicions about Ed Balls, Milliband & G. Brown's takeover from Tony Blair.

Have to admit I'd never heard of Project Volvo before, so am going to do a little research into it, before I give more feedback.

Title should have been, Brown Balls and Milliband.

But good thread none-the-less.

This is a pretty good thread op. I don't care much for British polotics because im not British but this is a pretty good read. S&F for a good thread.

Haha, after reading your thread earlier, I stumbled across this!


'There was no plot': Ed Balls flatly denies 'brutal' campaign to oust Blair… despite the evidence.

-Brown told aide to take 'brutal' approach to remove PM

-Miliband named in memos as co-conspirator in plot

Claims that Labour MP Ed Balls tried to plot a leadership coup to oust Tony Blair just days after the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, have been rejected by the Shadow Chancellor.

The Labour MP has been implicated in an operation to replace Mr Blair with Gordon Brown at a time when the government was focussed on fighting terrorism.

A series of letters between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, which have just been uncovered, reveal the then Chancellor ordered Mr Balls to take a ‘brutal’ approach to force Mr Blair to stand down.

But Mr Balls flatly denied the claims today.

'The idea that these documents show that there was a plot or an attempt to remove Tony Blair is just not true,' he says.

'The fact that the first time I knew that [the documents] had been taken was last night when they appeared in the Daily Telegraph. I think shows that I didn't think...these documents were of great significance,' Balls told Sky News.

Mr Balls went on to describe the relationship between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as 'under stress'.

'There was a lot of pressure, there were difficulties, there were arguments....But the idea that these documents show that there was a plot or an attempt to remove Tony Blair is just not true,' he says.

Whitehall officials are investigating whether the leak of private papers relating to the former Labour administration amounts to a breach of Government secrecy.

Reports today suggested that the documents came from the personal files of shadow chancellor Mr Balls and went missing after he moved out of the Department for Children following last year's general election. I

It is understood that they were not among boxes of papers delivered to his House of Commons office by the department.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said today: 'The Cabinet Office is looking first into whether this particular set of papers was in the possession of any Government department and, if so, whether there have been any breaches of document security within government.'

There is nothing new about the allegations of poisonous relations between the two men at the top of the Labour government.

But Mr Balls’ involvement in the days after the July 7 atrocity will raise questions about the role Labour leader Ed Miliband’s right-hand man played when Labour were in government.

Mr Balls had just been made an MP in 2005, however, he was a close ally of Mr Brown’s having served as his trusted economic adviser since the early 1990s.

The revelations could thwart Mr Balls’ own ambitions to one day become Labour leader after he insisted he had ‘never, ever’ been involved in any attempts to undermine colleagues.

The letters also name Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, as co-conspirators.

The secret files, which were handed to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, include memos and letters which also reveal Mr Miliband was told to come up with the policy programme for Labour’s first 100 days under Mr Brown

Their release come the day after Mr Blair's memoirs were published in paperback and date back to July 19 2005, a fortnight after the terror attack on London.

In one memo, Mr Brown said he regarded Mr Blair as a ‘muddled’ lightweight, who issued ‘lies’ about Iraq and was ‘inconsistent’ and ‘shallow’.

Secret papers given by the then Prime Minister to Mr Brown were passed on to his trusted confidant, Mr Balls.

Mr Brown also sent a memo to Mr Balls in mid-July, ordering him to start a campaign at that autumn’s Labour conference to discuss ‘renewing’ and ‘reforming’ the party.

Mr Balls was told to give an interview on the eve of conference calling for renewal, which would spark a debate over the leadership.

A document written by Mr Balls suggested the Brownites feared a rival leadership bid by David Miliband with the backing of government spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

In 2006, Mr Brown sent Mr Blair a letter, outlining his demands for a transition to power.

Mr Blair wrote back, saying ‘you (understandably) want me to go now’ but warned that he would go at a time of his choosing.

‘The final decision has to be mine and that cannot provoke a breakdown,’ he wrote.

The Prime Minister insisted that the new leader had to be seen as the ‘candidate of continuity and change’.

Secret talks between the camps were hatched to thrash out a transition deal. Mr Blair offered to step down in 2007 if Mr Brown backed his reform programmes for the NHS, welfare, energy, schools and the ‘respect’ agenda.

Although he failed in his bid to become Labour leader last year, Mr Balls is seen by many in Labour as the only serious successor to Mr Miliband.

His reputation as a Machiavellian back room character and master of the dark political arts has ensured that Mr Miliband cannot afford to keep Mr Balls too far from his side.

A senior Labour source last night dismissed the leaked memos.

He said: ‘This is ancient history. We are a party looking to the future.’

'The fact that the first time I knew that [the documents] had been taken was last night when they appeared in the Daily Telegraph. I think shows that I didn't think...these documents were of great significance,' Balls told Sky News. - Is that not basically admitting fault to being part of it all?

www.dailymail.co.uk...