Diary

13 June 2009

Roger Mosey opens his diary

It now feels as remote as one of those doomed summers before the first world war, but there was a time when Team Brown seemed like it was destined to rule the universe. As editor of Today — my job in the mid-1990s — you occupy one of the best vantage-points in politics, and I was among a group accompanying the then shadow chancellor to England v. Scotland during Euro 96. On a glorious June afternoon there was Gordon and his press minder, Charlie Whelan; Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, before they were married; and fellow journalists of various political hues. The talk was more about Paul Gascoigne’s goal that day than about neo-endogenous growth theory. But two things are striking about that period. First, New Labour as created under Blair–Brown was technically the most accomplished opposition party we’d seen, with its array of talent and merciless harrying of the Major Cabinet. But second, there’s the blinding contrast between the aspirations of 1996-97, which were deeply felt whatever your view on the policies, and the reality of power in 2009 in a government under siege. Scotland lost that afternoon, but if Team Brown could have seen the future from their Wembley seats, I suspect they might have stayed in the pub even longer after the match.

It was intriguing to see a former reporter from The World at One become Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in last week’s reshuffle. Ben Bradshaw reached Cabinet rank narrowly ahead, if the polls are to be believed, of Michael Gove, who was once a reporter on Today. Jolly good they were, too. But if we’d known they were potential senior ministers, we might have been more careful about sending them out of the office to seek interviews around rain-lashed housing estates in Wigan or wherever. The worst thing for any reporter is to have a day’s work dropped because of late-breaking stories or because their piece wasn’t quite good enough, and it happened — albeit rarely — to both of them. I hope they don’t remember who was editing the programmes at the time.

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