He said what?
Do you get confused between Iraq and Iran? Easily done, especially at moments of high pressure. It sometimes happens to Gordon Brown.
Although this blog is mainly concerned with access to government records, this item will stray a little into the question of their accuracy.
When Gordon Brown gave his prime ministerial press conference on Monday, he mis-spoke at numerous points. Perhaps it was one sign of the stress he was under as he faced intense and critical questioning over his general election wobble.
At one point, for example, he referred to having been in power for several days. He managed to correct that one himself, but other errors went by without him realising. However they've been put right for him in the , which doesn't record what he said but what he presumably meant to say.
So the transcript corrects some minor confusion between whether a journalist was putting a 'statement' or a 'question' and between whether making tax promises you can't keep causes economic 'stability' or 'instability'.
When he spoke, he also said that the Iraqis must hear the message that interference in another country's internal affairs without support from an international organisation is unacceptable. He clearly intended this as a message to the Iranians, and the transcript records him as saying 'Iranians' although he actually uttered 'Iraqis' twice.
It's well known that Hansard presents a tidied-up rather than verbatim version of what MPs have said, but there is nothing in the Downing St website's to indicate that it does the same.
Of course it's easy to understand why Downing Street wouldn't want its site to be telling the world that Brown was issuing warnings to the Iraqis that he really intended for the Iranians. So there's certainly a case for not simply transcribing clear errors word for word.
But in this era of transparency and trust, perhaps the most honest response would be for the transcript to be accurate, while adding a note that he actually meant to say something else.
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