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May 12, 2010

Evening Standard had Gordon Brown resignation hours ahead of rivals

By Dominic wireposts

The London Evening Standard claimed an impressive scoop yesterday revealing hours before anyone else had the story firmed up that Gordon Brown was set to resign as Prime Minister last night.

Gordon Brown made his resignation statement outside the door of Number Ten just after 7pm last night. The Standard hit the streets of London at around 4pm and would have gone to press at least two hours before then. At that point the prospect of a Lib-Lab deal was still apparently on the table.

But Standard political editor Joe Murphy confidently predicted in his front page story: “Gordon Brown is set to resign tonight as Prime Minister and allow David Cameron to be Britain’s new Prime Minister.”

Murphy was named as the third best political reporter in the UK in the April edition of Press Gazette following a poll of members of the public and a survey of political journalists.

2pm UPDATE: Joe Murphy has had a chat with us about how the scoop came about. Read the news story here on the main site.

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