Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour’s slow running-down of the media

Yesterday, after Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Brexit, he moved on from press questions about the substance of his policy change to seeking non-media questions. It was presumably to show that Labour is more interested in the real questions of real people rather than the biased agenda of the press. That real question ended up being ‘please will you hurry up and be our Prime Minister?’

Corbynites would argue that even a question as pointless as this is better than the mocking tone that journalists take as they try to claim, on the basis of whispered gossip, that this is a result of some kind of Shadow Cabinet falling out. Why not focus on the real issues, they argue. But the problem is that politicians are the least able to gauge what a legitimate press question is. All too often, for them, a legitimate question is in fact merely one they can answer easily, or one that contains praise for them.

It’s easy to see how a party leader might end up in this position. The House of Commons operates on a system of patronage, whereby ambitious MPs in the governing party believe it is advantageous to waste their time in the Chamber asking ‘questions’ which are in fact elaborate attempts at praising the party leader or minister at the despatch box, and of giving that colleague a breather from real scrutiny. We see this more obviously on the Tory benches as they are in government, but a burrow through the archives of Hansard will show that Labour MPs (albeit not Jeremy Corbyn) have been just as guilty.

Yesterday’s question also suggests that ‘real people’, which by the way is almost always a misnomer for ‘members drafted in to provide the applause at a party event’ may not necessarily provide the sort of probing questions that those seeking to lead our country deserve.

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