This chapter is part of a project examining how politicians manipulate statistics and how they can
be institutionally countered. We rhetorically analyse how the Chair of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority
countered the Minister of Health who was manipulating the statistics for Covid-19 testing. The Chair wrote two public
letters to the Minister. The first was diplomatically phrased. When this letter failed to achieve its purpose, the
Chair wrote a more directly critical letter, which was effective. We analyse the letters and how they were reported in
the UK national press. The diplomatic letter was virtually ignored, but the second letter was widely reported, with
newspapers framing the story as a respected independent ‘watchdog’ censuring a minister for misusing statistics.
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