Please don't damage our international relations
Given the , I wonder if the new Swedish prime minister has received a letter of congratulations from Tony Blair. And if so, how will we ever know?
Here you can read a copy of the congratulations letter Blair sent to the previous Swedish PM, the Social Democrat Goran Persson.
However, this letter is a secret document. Please do not read it if in doing so you feel you may cause damage to Britain's relations with Sweden.
It is secret according to Downing St, who refused to reveal it to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ in response to an FOI request because to do so would apparently damage international relations.
But it is not secret in the view of the Swedish government. If you had asked the Swedish prime minister's office for a copy, they would have given you one too.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I possess a collection of items of correspondence between Blair and Persson (including Tony Blair's views on Sven Goran Ericsson) which require secrecy in the view of Downing St but merit disclosure in the view of the Swedes.
However this congratulations letter is the one such item which has featured in an appeal from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to the Information Commissioner.
And bizarrely the Information Commissioner's Office turned down our appeal, deciding that it was against the public interest to let you read it.
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Surely the ICO should have simply cited Section 21 ("information available via other means")!!! Utter mmadness.