British politics has become a nasty game of Gotcha

As Tony Blair once remarked, British politics has become a game of Gotcha. I am, to put it mildly, no fan of Suella Braverman, but for the life of me I cannot get excited about this latest piece of nonsense to do with her speeding ticket. It is certainly no resigning matter.

When I have made this point, I have generally received a favourable response. But there are some dissenters. One response was that, ‘We’re talking about Braverman, Chris. How do we get rid of her?’ To which there is an obvious riposte: ‘At a general election, perhaps?’

We live in the age of the feeding frenzy. Originally a tabloid phenomenon it has long since infected mainstream journalism. Scarcely a G7 or G20 summit passes without the world’s media being treated to the sight of the British press pack hijacking press conferences with the demands that the prime minister provide an immediate response to some relatively trivial domestic incident. They were at it again in Hiroshima last week, when they quizzed Sunak about Braverman’s speed awareness course. Surely they could have waited until he got home.

It is hard to say where all this started. At a guess, I would say the rise of the feeding frenzy had its origins in the dying days of John Major’s accident-prone government. A lobby correspondent once remarked to me that if he could get the word ‘sleaze’ into his opening paragraph, he was guaranteed at least a page lead. Blair once said he regretted making so much of alleged sleaze because it was sure to rebound, as indeed it did. Since then, of course, the rise of social media has provided a rich treasure trove of material for the easily offended

There is a PhD thesis to be written on Great Feeding Frenzies I have known. My all-time favourite was the suggestion, in the spring of 2002, that Blair had tried to wangle himself a better seat at the Queen Mother’s funeral. It blazed for days and then suddenly died as though someone had flicked a switch – which I suspect is exactly what happened when word reached Tory HQ that the Queen was none to happy about her mother’s funeral being abused in this way.

‘Obama snubs Brown’ was another favourite. In the autumn of 2009, in the wake of the near financial meltdown, when Gordon Brown was trying to persuade world leaders to inject liquidity into their economies to stave off recession (arguably his finest hour) the British media became obsessed with snub stories. The line seems to have been decided before Brown left London and, to Obama’s amazement, was pursued all the way into the Oval office. On an earlier trip to the US, the lobby hacks amused themselves by demanding that Brown apologise for causing the financial crisis – never mind that it started in the US mortgage market.

As for poor Jeremy Corbyn, we had ‘Corbyn and the Commie spy’, ‘Corbyn the collaborator’, Corbyn the friend of the IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, you name it. At one point indignant Tory MPs were demanding that the German government produce his Stasi file, even though the Germans were saying there wasn’t one. Day after day when he emerged from his modest home in Islington he had to fight his way through a baying mob of journalists demanding instant responses to the smear of the hour. Let’s not even go there. One day someone will write it all up dispassionately.

Of late there has been another insidious development. The habit of journalists assembled in Downing Street shouting provocative questions at ministers as they come and go. They were at it again last week. ’Are you going to resign, Home Secretary?’ The question is not asked with the expectation of a response, but merely with a view to upping the ante by getting the smear of the hour on record so it can be played back on the evening news. Were I prime minister, which by some inexplicable oversight I am not, I would be tempted to restrict access to Downing Street to a pool of agency and lobby journalists chosen on a rota basis and leave the rest of the mob howling at the gates. Imagine the fuss that would cause, but it would blow over.

In the short term, of course, it is tempting for the opposition to ride the tiger. One has got used to the sight of shadow ministers and compliant backbenchers boiling with confected outrage. It is easy politics and provides a welcome distraction from their own shortcomings. Having been out of power for so long Labour have perhaps forgotten what it’s like when the boot is on the other foot. They may soon find out.