Council leader Stephen Greenhalgh: Tory ministers can "run a piss up in a brewery" after all

Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh was recently in Scrapbook’s guns owing to his bit-part in Nick Clegg’s disastrous children’s centre visit (Greenhalgh was responsible for shutting the facility). However, our most dedicated readers may recall his contribution to the pantheon of idiotic gaffes: the Hammersmith and Fulham Council leader told an event organised by Public Finance magazine last November:

My mates are all in the shadow Cabinet, waiting to get those [ministerial] boxes, being terribly excited. I went to university with them, they haven’t run a piss-up in a brewery. They’re going to get a department of state, in one case running the finances of the nation.

But when challenged on this in a recent interview with Total Politics, Greenhalgh says:

The comment I’ve made is that the shadow cabinet hadn’t run a piss up in a brewery – to paraphrase Obama – “yes they can!” I never said they couldn’t.

Oh, yeah? Though he pleads with interviewer Asa Bennett that ”the context of that is important”, a look back to the original coverage in Public Finance tells a different story. Those present seem clear that Greenhalgh did cast aspersions over the experience of his (then shadow cabinet) colleagues. As he said at the time:

If you’re going to fail, fail running Alabama, fail running Texas, fail running the city of Paris – don’t just take over the country.

Quite.