There are few things that irritate an MP in the chamber of the House of Commons more than the sight of all the journalists in the press gallery walking out in the middle of a debate.
There are few things that irritate an MP in the chamber of the House of Commons more than the sight of all the journalists in the press gallery walking out in the middle of a debate. It annoys them so much not because it means their own remarks will probably go unreported but because it is a visible symbol of the shift in power from the legislature to the executive. The journalists are all dashing out to hear some government aide explain what a minister really meant by an earlier statement.
On Monday, the briefing that followed a statement from Michael Gove also revealed a shift of power within the coalition. As Gove explained how the coalition was going to replace Labour’s scheme for paying less well-off children to stay on at school, a loyal aide sat on the gallery’s green benches waiting to brief the press. Then a Lib Dem spin doctor bounded in and sat next to him. The message was clear: this is a Liberal Democrat policy victory. Indeed, anyone who had read the papers on Saturday would have known that Nick Clegg had persuaded the Tories to put £70 million more into this scheme than they intended.
When Gove sat down, the Tory and the Liberal Democrat spinners disappeared around a corner for several minutes to try to agree what they were going to say to the journalists present. It didn’t take the skills of Woodward and Bernstein to work out what the subject of this little negotiation was.
It was just the latest — and most visible — example of the new, more aggressive Lib Dem approach to coalition.
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