So You Want to be a Political Journalist

Acknowledgements

When pulling together this book, I had one particular audience in mind: those I meet at university and elsewhere who are determined to become confident and competent journalists. Yet while politics impinges on so much media coverage, the level of knowledge among student and trainee journalists of how our political and parliamentary systems work seems to be alarmingly low.

So I am immensely grateful to Shane Greer at Biteback Publishing for offering me this opportunity to produce a book that looks at politics from the point of view of a journalist. And a huge thank you to Sam Carter and Hollie Teague for their efforts in helping to edit the final results.

Any reporter should benefit from the contributions from journalists, lecturers and others, writing about their own specialities, their own experiences and giving their personal advice on identifying, tracking and reporting political stories. My heartfelt thanks go to them: Chris Moncrieff, Michael White, Peter Riddell, Ann Treneman, James Landale, Joy Johnson, Nick Jones, Andrew Pierce, Adam Holloway MP, Richard Osley, Ivor Gaber, Steve Schifferes, Colin Brown, Amanda Brown, Andrew Hawkins, Carolyn Quinn, Sam Macrory and Jonathan Isaby.

My gratitude goes also to those journalists who, whether they know it or not, I regarded as my mentors over the years, especially: Chris Moncrieff (PA), Phil Webster (The Times) and Alan Kirby (Coventry Evening Telegraph). And the editors who either employed or tolerated me over the years, including the late Harry Pigott-Smith (Stratford-upon-Avon Herald) and editors of The Times, the late Charles Douglas-Home, Charles Wilson, Simon Jenkins and Peter Stothard. What they all had in common was to encourage and trust me to pursue ‘stories’, to beat me up when I made mistakes and to support me without hesitation whenever politicians complained. That is the best that any political journalist should expect.

Finally, I doubt if this book would have been possible without the unwavering confidence in the results of my children Ben and Kate, and their spouses, Inger and Martin.

Sheila Gunn

Part I: So you want to be a political journalist

1: The front page

Sheila Gunn

When students say that they want to be a political journalist, my first question is: why? This is perhaps slightly unfair given that I have probably just described some aspect of life at Westminster, peppered with anecdotes, which makes it sound as if it is all fun and games.

Since I do not want to sound pompous, I don’t talk to them about ‘writing the first rough draft of history’ or ‘you’ll have a seat in the front row...’ Instead, without meaning to be unkind, I ask if they have been to a meeting at their local council and identified any stories. This is an essential first step. If they bother and it does not put them off completely, then maybe they are considering a reasonable career choice. Alternatively, I suggest they attend a select committee or Westminster Hall debate in Parliament. They are easy to access, more intimate and focused events which discuss issues in some detail, without the usual ya-boo associated with MPs. At the very least I would expect them to have watched elected representatives at work via the BBC’s excellent Democracy Live website or the parliamentary channel. If none of this attracts them, I presume that they have a totally starry-eyed, misguided vision of life as a political journalist.

The first task set for students when I arrived at journalism college in Cardiff – and is still set on some courses today – is to go into the local city and come back with a number of good ideas for stories. A wonderful test, as it drives home the point that journalists need to view the world in a different way than other mortals. For some, such an experience is unsettling, if not downright uncomfortable. Hopefully they will find a different, more conducive career path.

News v. comment

Political journalism in particular seems to be open to misunderstandings about what the job actually entails. Perhaps you thought it was all about standing in front of that famous black door and giving the world your view on what was happening behind it? A big mistake. Just read James Landale’s description of his working week if in doubt.

You will soon learn that there is a distinction between reporting and commentating. Do you want to communicate your views on the comprehensive spending review, the proposed schools reforms or the war in Afghanistan? Then, OK. Join a campaign, set up a blog, start out on the long road to becoming a politician. But it is a very bad idea to use this as a basis for becoming a political journalist.

Any confusion is understandable. Too much of what is called ‘news’ – which should be about the reporting of facts – is now tainted by personal comments. Oddly enough, the puritans at The Independent must bear some of the blame for accelerating the trend of weaving opinion into news stories. And talking of puritans, painting all politicians as criminals – while jolly good fun for a lot of journalists for a couple of years – is not actually in the interests of journalists or their audiences in the longer term. Yes, let’s punish those who broke the criminal law. But if you start out on a career in political journalism with the objective of humiliating as many politicians as possible, do not be surprised if your reputation sinks alongside theirs. There’s a world of difference between challenging, scrutinising, criticising – all of which you should be doing – and sneering cynically at our elected representatives. When on Desert Island Discs, the Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow described his role as: ‘I am simply someone who questions.’ A near perfect description of a journalist’s role.

You may tell me that you regard covering politics as the most important job in journalism. Perhaps. Although the role has diminished to some extent as the differences between the political parties have narrowed. This means that more of the focus tends to be on the analysis and impact of particular policies, which is covered in greater depth by specialist reporters.

‘So, why did you become a political reporter?’ you are justified in asking. Rather than pretend that I had some grand ambition, I tend to tell you the truth. We all need a USP – unique selling point. I managed to beat off competition to get my first job in journalism, on the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, because I already had good shorthand and a clean driving licence. Not very exciting, I know. The paper had never employed a girl before because, as the editor put it ‘there are certain jobs I just cannot send you out on’. I kept silent but made a point of quickly proving him wrong. As I moved up via a regional evening and a regional daily to the Press Association, that shorthand gave me an important advantage. I could be trusted to cover any council meeting or criminal court and sprinkle my stories with a reasonable amount of accurate, direct and relevant quotes.

Never underestimate the value of this type of practical skill. For instance, I joined the (then) Surrey Daily Advertiser in Guildford as deputy news editor five days before the Provisional IRA bombed two pubs in the town, killing five people. I was a natural to cover the subsequent Old Bailey trial of the Guildford Four (later, of course, cleared), with myself and a colleague filing virtually a full broadsheet page a day.

On moving to PA, I had to decide whether to specialise in crime or politics. A senior colleague pointed out that, if you cover politics, your byline is more likely to be on the front page. That persuaded me. Maybe not the most honourable of motives, but one which is immediately attractive to a journalist.

History matters

You need to be interested in politics. As Peter Riddell makes clear in his chapter, you should develop a good understanding of what has happened in politics in the past thirty or forty years. It is too easy to sound ignorant or lazy if you do not. I make absolutely no excuse for the fact that there are similarities in the advice given by several contributors about monitoring and absorbing political stories on an almost hourly basis.

Another great advantage is to regard politicians neither as friends nor foes, but as a group of people who can influence the lives and livelihoods of all of us. That is what makes them worthy of your interest. Most of them may look uninspiring or boring, but luckily for journalists they are capable of doing the most extraordinary and unexpected things. Just think back to events over the past twenty years. A novelist could not make it up!

Are you party political? That is, do you feel strongly about a particular party? Its politicians? Its policies? This is not a sin. But what if you were given a good story that would damage any of these entities? Any hesitation at all, should make you think twice about political journalism as a career choice. There are plenty of roles within the parties, think tanks and campaigns which may be more satisfying for you. Because what should turn you on is the scent, the tracking and the development of a good story. ‘Good’, of course, is not used in any moral sense; to a journalist, it means a story that will be featured high up in the running order.

A ‘normal’ life

Observing politicians at crucial times is fascinating. And you may be seated only a few yards away from them. Or you may even – like many of the contributors – have a role in the events that determine their future. You will often be bored; you may occasionally be scared when a deadline looms and the story is not evolving as expected; and you should have plenty to laugh about. But your job, essentially, is to report stories within a tight timescale. You do not have the benefit of hindsight, of mulling over all the implications. You must churn it out.

This does not mean that, on any day, you can predict what you will be doing. Do you regard this as an advantage or a problem? We are all creatures of habit to a certain extent. But unless the idea of not quite knowing what you will be required to do within the next twenty-four hours appeals to you, then perhaps a more dependable job would suit you better. Chris Moncrieff wisely advises you to have your up to date passport with you at all times. You never know when you might need it. I am taking as read that you are not looking for a desk job? Although for too many reporters, life today means a computer screen. Please try to escape as often as possible. You can be the eyes and ears for your audience only if you witness key political events and are in regular contact with politicians. This usually requires spending time outside your formal working hours to develop your knowledge and your contacts.

The very uncertainty of political life makes the job a poor companion to life outside Westminster. Booking theatre tickets (unless it is essential political viewing), arranging dinners, attending that PTA meeting all become more of a challenge. Too many of us have let down loved ones at the last minute because of some drama. To say that politics is a form of addiction is, hopefully, an exaggeration. But beware. It can take over your entire life.

Top political jobs are among the most sought after in journalism, up there with foreign postings. It is a highly competitive world and there will be plenty of other journalists lusting after your job. New editors and producers have an unsettling habit of wanting to shake up the political team they inherit or even, as I have actually witnessed, offering a Westminster posting to someone they meet at a party. It is not a lifestyle that suits everyone.

Different voices

This book is not designed as an examination of all the political processes. Instead it describes the political processes and players from the point of view of a working journalist. What and who is important? How do you operate? Who do you need to know? And, most of all, where are you most likely to find the stories? In other words, it aims at stripping away any mystique surrounding life at Westminster and offering very practical help in reporting the actions and decisions of our politicians and public servants.

All of the contributors to this book have been highly successful in their different roles in politics. Most work or have worked for a wide variety of media outlets and specialised in different forms of political journalism. Others, such as Adam Holloway MP and the pollster Andrew Hawkins, will give you a different, but essential perspective.

Hopefully their advice and experiences will help you make your own decision about the next steps in your career. Much of it, of course, applies to whatever sort of journalism you embark on. For whether you are at Westminster, or anywhere else these days, you can dig out excellent, significant and unexpected stories. And really that should be all that matters to you.

2: The best job in journalism: political reporting

Michael White

One Saturday in the late 1980s I attended a party political conference staged at an American-owned hotel in the small Central American republic of El Salvador. The country had been going through a brutal civil war and the star of the day’s show had been associated with right-wing death squads. No, I don’t speak Spanish, but I got the point of the occasion.

That’s why I love being a political reporter, why it’s the best job in journalism, why it’s the best job in the world. What, even now, I hear you ask? When the British Empire has evaporated and our Lilliputian MPs, more social workers than legislators, sometimes shrink before the power of executive government and the lash of a media emboldened by the shame of the expenses scandal and newspapers which break the law?

It’s a fair heckle, but only as far as it goes. In our own time and place, slowly emerging from a nasty recession in early twenty-first-century Britain, just as Asia dramatically reasserts its central role in world history, politics is widely despised – though an exception is usually made for Nelson Mandela, a wily man as well as saintly.

But the lip-curling response is always a mistake, as Aristotle could – and did – explain. Bernard Crick put it simply in his ever-green and much reprinted volume, In Defence of Politics (1962). People who prefer to ignore politics in the hope of being left alone, he wrote, usually find themselves an ‘unwitting ally’ of those who think a state is better off without politics or politicians. In the process of cleansing it that sort leave nothing – and no one – alone. Did I hear you murmur ‘Putin’ there, or ‘Palin’?

Cheers and jeers

That was the point I revalidated in that air-conditioned hotel in a steamy Latino republic. Every time the party star’s name was mentioned everyone stood and cheered. This wasn’t a political conference in any meaningful sense of the word, it was a rally for someone for whom politics was a cloak for military-backed authoritarian rule.

As such it reminded me of a story told by the late Mark Arnold-Forster, one of my Guardian heroes, admirably modest but also a twice-decorated veteran of World War II. At the start of the Cold War, Mark and a correspondent from the communist Daily Worker had been the only British reporters present at a congress of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP), which ran Poland after Stalin had consolidated the Soviet grip on eastern Europe. As with the right-wing thugs in San Salvador, every time Stalin’s name was mentioned at that Warsaw Congress everyone rose to applaud – including the chap from the Daily Worker. ‘Why are you doing that?’ asked Arnold-Forster. ‘Why not? It’s a free country,’ replied his irony-lite colleague.

Which, of course, it wasn’t, not until the trade union politicians of the Solidarity movement called the Soviet bluff in the 1980s – no military invasion this time – and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 triggered the final collapse of the PUWP. The mighty Soviet system which had suppressed open politics across the Iron Curtain countries of eastern Europe – and in the USSR itself – collapsed like the proverbial domino to the astonishment even of those who had long predicted such a climax to the 40-year Cold War stand-off.

It wasn’t that there were no politics in Soviet Russia, of course not. But they were the politics of a Kremlin court, of a rigid, increasingly unresponsive bureaucratic network, more concerned with protecting its own power than addressing the ever-more urgent challenges of economic, social and political modernisation. It was a world of whispers and intrigue where rumour (often wrong) thrived and the party controlled the courts and press: a recipe for disaster and backwardness.

China’s Communist party has adapted to the challenge much more effectively, though many predict that its political rigidity will eventually prove its own downfall too. Left, right and centre – as Hosni Mubarak’s regime reminded us again in Egypt – sooner or later regimes which suppress politics prove too brittle to resist internal or external shocks which shatter them if they cannot adapt. Thus did Mogul India fall so easily to the British in the eighteenth century, the Aztecs and Inca civilisations to (even fewer) Spanish invaders in the sixteenth and half the Middle East (the half which most hated Roman rule) to Mohammed’s holy warriors almost a thousand years before.

Changing times at Westminster

Forgive the civics lesson. What has any of this to do with the parochial, sometimes grubby politics of the Palace of Westminster where I have loitered on and off for thirty years? Everything to do with it. Whether a state and wider society – there is an important difference – are in confident expansion, in terminal decline or (as ours is) struggling to adapt to a new role in a fast-changing world, we have to settle our differences. The most effective way to do so (usually by compromise), to divide up the national cake as fairly as possible (not easy at present) and to decide how best to move forward is via open politics, responsive and accountable.

Put simply, we elect people to make decisions on our behalf – from parish pump to Edinburgh Parliament and Brussels ministers, but chiefly still at Westminster. If we don’t like what they do (or fail to do), we sack them and try another lot. No one is imprisoned or tortured, murdered, dispossessed or exiled in the process. In Britain these ground rules have been developed over centuries and is a miracle of liberty which we neglect at our peril. Though hard-won democracy is more easily lost, as Aristotle’s beloved Athens discovered.

In my lifetime, the political process in Britain has never been revolutionary but frequently dramatic. In July 1945 – three months before my birth – British voters ejected Winston Churchill, the right man to win the war, but not the peace, they rightly judged. ‘Will you be shot?’ a woman admirer asked the sacked great man. Worse than that, he replied, I will have to sit on the opposition benches. And so he did: lose touch and you lose power. Harold Macmillan (handing over to a thirteenth earl in 1963 did not save his party twelve months later), Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, Jim Callaghan, Gordon Brown in 2010, all were unceremoniously ejected. Voters usually did the job, but Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair – both triple election winners – were deemed over-stayers by their party and cast out. Anthony Eden, whose 1956 invasion of Suez makes Blair’s Iraq adventure look a model of openness and wisdom, was forced out by a palace coup: the Tories were much less open in those days, no leadership elections for them until 1965!

Amazing! And I had a ringside seat for half of it, from the bit where Callaghan took over from the exhausted Wilson in early 1976. Late one night just three weeks later young Michael Heseltine picked up the ceremonial Mace after a narrow, slightly dodgy, Commons defeat and virtually hurled it at Labour MPs. I know, I saw it – as few did in the pre-TV era. Old lags in the press gallery had seen nothing like it. But there I was, watching open-mouthed in the pre-TV lights gloom. Magic! I was there next morning too, when Hezza apologised.

Trivial? Yes, of course, but the underlying issues were serious in that crisis-torn decade. The three years of the Labour minority government (1976–79) which preceded Mrs Thatcher’s arrival at No. 10 were like that: a nightly drama when the government could lose a 10 o’clock vote and fall at any time, as it eventually did. When they were in danger of losing by 300–299, ministers sent the 299 home early, lost 300–0 thereby nullifying the defeat’s meaning. They really did that too!

What followed was different; Margaret Thatcher was different. No more trimming, no more compromise or muddling through. After the industrial winter of discontent the unions must be DEFEATED! Along with inflation, the Argentinians, assorted terrorists (including that Mandela man), Communism and ‘wet’ liberal Tories. The white-knuckle ride worked for almost a decade, but ended in tears, as it usually does, in 1990. They stay too long, they think themselves indispensable, they run out of luck and excuses and – this one’s important – the voters get BORED. Thatcher, who compromised quite well to start with (you have to in politics), made the mistake of believing her own Iron Lady propaganda and lost touch over the poll tax.

Daily life

What was it like reporting all this? Wonderful. I was a member of The Guardian’s four-strong lobby team, the group of political reporters entitled to hang around in the members’ lobby outside the Commons chamber – then the great crossroads of Parliament – to speak to MPs, as well as attend the mysterious twice-daily briefing from the No. 10 spokesman. But I was also the paper’s parliamentary sketchwriter, recording the dramas, the jokes, the folly in the chamber itself.

Hard work, but gripping. In the days before the 24/7 cycle of relentless rolling news, of fax machines, mobile phones and parliament live on radio, let alone the internet, blogging, tweeting and spin doctors, life was often more leisurely – and more reflective. Westminster was much more insulated from voters and political reporters more independent from those pesky newsdesks a couple of miles away in and around Fleet Street.

If you were a junior, you came to work by 11am and read select committee reports or talked to any MP you could find. You read the papers, perhaps attended the 11 o’clock briefing, perched on Bernard Ingham’s sofa in the window to the right of the big black No. 10 door. Or you might pop into Annie’s Bar or the Strangers’ for a pre-lunch drink in the hope of meeting a minister.

Ah, Annie’s. It had been revived in the 1970s as a watering hole where hacks and MPs could meet on equal terms and my old boss, Ian Aitken, The Guardian’s political editor from 1975 to 1990, made it a basic principle to be there after 5 o’clock so MPs who wanted to tell him something (no mobiles in 1975) knew where to find him. On a good day they queued up!

By late afternoon decisions must be made, stories discussed with patient news editors, copy typed or mapped out as points one to five on an envelope with a view to being dictated over one of the phones dedicated for the purpose in the rabbit warren of press rooms known as ‘the Burma Road’. Did I say dictated? Yes, no laptops then. You mostly phoned all out-of-office stories to men and women wearing headsets and known as ‘copytakers’.

Some were rude (‘is there much more of this?’ and ‘you’ve already made that point’), others delighted. Old Joe with the smoker’s cough had serious left-wing politics. ‘That’s complete rubbish, you know, Mike.’ Or ‘I knew Denis Healey when he was a Communist, Mike.’ Annoying but better than ‘Thatcher? Can you spell that please.’ And at least at Westminster you weren’t dictating for half an hour from the only red payphone on the council estate with grannies tapping the window with 10p coins, mouthing ‘are you going to be much longer?’ That would have been the polite grannies.

Twenty-first-century Westminster

It’s all gone and it won’t come back. Earlier deadlines; the intrusive demands which the internet makes on reporters and MPs alike (they used to get an average twelve constituency letters a week, they now get 300 plus emails, I get 100 daily emails from strangers); the so-called ‘family-friendly’ hours regime which sends parliament home long before midnight. All have helped make the Palace of Westminster more efficient, though not necessarily wiser than in the 1970s (when many ministers were World War II veterans) and certainly not friendlier or more fun. Even the modern craze for sensible eating has combined with the curb on expenses to make chips a rarity on the health-conscious menus and the good old TBL (that’s a Two Bottle Lunch with a good contact) virtually as dead as Mr Gladstone. Indian arm-wrestling at midnight on the floor of the SNP whips office? It wouldn’t happen now. Or would it? Perhaps I am too old to know.

Either way, contacts, how to make them, keep them, cherish them or lose them, remain much as they were. Yes, ‘Westminster village’ is a cliché but, like many clichés, an accurate one. Write something nasty, nice, wise or foolish about a politician and Sod’s Law dictates that you meet them in a corridor next day. All MPs, peers too, officials and spin doctors (they’re only press officers with attitude) have their favourites and their enemies in the press. And vice versa. I have often found myself liking people whose politics I don’t much approve of (Alan Clark?) and approving of dull, decent types with whom I would not want to be stuck in a lift.

That’s life. Some MPs expect to be lunched and quoted by name, not necessarily accurately if they are rent-a-quote types who love the tabloids and believe (wrongly) that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Each to his own. Reporters were once playing a ‘Ten Biggest Shits’ game with a list of MPs names when Gordon Grieg, naughty-but-nice political editor of the Daily Mail, intervened: ‘But they’re all my best contacts.’ Gordon once forced a Tory minister’s resignation (unfairly I thought), but the ex-minister was seen buying him a drink that evening. He liked him; nothing personal.

Are there different ways to do the job? Of course. Some political reporters like my old Guardian colleague, David Hencke, specialise in reading the small print and trying to unearth scandal. Others are diligent students of policy who wouldn’t look at gossip, even if some MP’s love life was all over the tabloids. Yet for some reporters – and MPs – gossip (who’s up, who’s down) is the essence of politics. In one sense they’re right too. In politics, personality is inseparable from policy and the exercise of power. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were different, right? John Major was definitely not Mrs T and we were grateful, for a while anyway.

In the fast-moving world of today, when Britain is experiencing its first peaceful coalition in eighty years, Gordon Brown already feels like history. He was Prime Minister as a boom turned into bust. The public mood is different. And Asia – China and India, not forgetting distant Brazil – are on the rise. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their teams are struggling to guide Britain through an economic storm, but in a world changed forever.

What now?

I am close to retirement, but I find the dynamics of coalition politics refreshingly different too. Suddenly it’s OK for Cabinet members to disagree publicly over policy as Tories and Lib Dems do. Well, up to a point it is, Vince. And electoral reform, will that make a new kind of politics? No, says me! Europe, an issue which ruined so many careers, seems to have gone quiet. Or is it only sleeping? And will the coalition last until 5 May 2015, as it promises to do, cheeky fellows? Or will it split – as British coalitions did in the past? We know about Nick Clegg (we think we do), but which way would Vince Cable jump?

So many questions, so many possibilities, and I haven’t even mentioned the biggest of all: Will the coalition’s economic strategy kickstart us into prosperity again or mire us in stagflation? The next scandal to rock the government? How can I tell? It may be in tomorrow’s Sunday papers, meaning that people like me will