Inference

The BBC's Editor of Live Political Programmes, Robbie Gibb says there was nowt wrong with the way the Daily Politics managed the revelation of Labour shadow minister Stephen Doughty's resignation  - though he acknowledges that the story of how it was done should have been kept within the BBC.

In a letter to the Labour Party's spinmeister Seumas Milne, he writes "The BBC's training department, the BBC Academy, contacted me asking for an article explaining what goes on behind the scenes when a politician resigns live on air. I had assumed (wrongly) that the article was for internal purposes only. When it became apparent that it had been published more widely, we decided to delete it as the piece was written in a tone that was only suitable for an internal audience. No other inference should be drawn from our decision to delete the blog".

Would that be a tone of vainglorious back-slapping at how deuced clever Gibb, Neil and his team are ?

• Michael Rosen has started an interesting discussion on his blog about the mechanics of the scoop.