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Iit is fair to say keir starmer haven’t had the best of times media since he became Prime Minister On 4th July 2024.
His first 19 months as Prime Minister were so bad that he is now in his fourth term. Director of Communications at Downing Street,
Their decision to try to scrap winter fuel payment For pensioners, briefing from Downing Street cabinet ministerfailed attempt reduce welfare billswithout stopping pre budget leakAnd much more, painting a picture of a man who is simply unprepared for the job.
However, it seems sir keer has decided not to take a long hard look at itself and its media operation. Rather than a failure to develop a coherent narrative in government, bring good news or even get the job done properly, the Prime Minister has apparently decided that the problem is that he has been scrutinized too much by the media.
So as Parliament was winding down the Christmas holidays, their newest communications director, tim allenDropped a bomb.
They told the lobby (collective name of journalists in Parliament) that the government is canceling a large portion of its daily media scrutiny.
What are they doing?
Allen, who was a supporting act during tony blair Era was appointed in September to lead the charge on the serious communications strategy in Starmer’s government.
His letter to the lobby revealed his grand vision of improving the Prime Minister’s media profile.
The top item was the cancellation of what was called the “afternoon lobby”. This is a briefing for journalists based in Parliament where they ask the Downing Street spokesperson about the day’s updates and stories affecting the government.
In addition, Allen said that the “morning lobby” – the more important morning version of this briefing – would no longer take place every day and would be replaced by an increasing number of infrequent press conferences with ministers.
Why is this a problem?
This is not just a technical issue within Parliament; This is a serious matter which undermines the democratic accountability of the government.
Essentially, what the government is doing is massively reducing the level of scrutiny it gets.
Lobby briefings have no fixed time limit, as those of us who have sat through particularly long briefings can attest, and are always on the record.
Additionally, every journalist attending from any publication has the opportunity to ask questions on almost any topic.
Therefore, cutting the number of briefings by more than half seriously reduces the media’s ability to hold the government accountable.
For years, Downing Street and governments in general have hated this process but have always tolerated it.
Why do governments give priority to press conferences?
Some might say that increased press conferences are a good replacement. They are not. Press conferences mean that only a select few journalists will get questions.
Furthermore, we introduced a new divide and rule policy around the Budget, when the Government invited only a small group of select media organizations to its press conference with the Chancellor, and tried to exclude others.
Is this an attack on freedom of expression?
However, it is worth noting that while previous governments have tried to limit scrutiny of lobby journalists, none had ever gone this far before.
Even Blair’s communications director Alistair Campbell or Lee Cain under Boris Johnson never tried to cancel a lobby briefing, despite having poor relations with journalists.
Critics of this current Labor government have often tried to portray this as authoritarian and anti-freedom speech. Although much of this criticism is exaggerated, canceling media scrutiny in Parliament would only damage the already unfortunate but well-established image of the Starmer government.
Taken together with two announcements in the past month that this government is planning to revoke the 800-year-old right to jury trials for many crimes and canceling next year’s planned local elections, which it could lose, the charge that this is an authoritarian government becomes much harder to dispute.
Never mind the controversy over people arrested for tweets and the tense issue of the Online Security Act, both of which have soured Britain’s relations with the US.
On several occasions, Starmer has rejected allegations of an attack on freedom of expression in the UK, saying that it is alive and well, not least in the presence of Donald Trump. But if he really believed that, he would reverse this despicable attempt to limit press scrutiny and instead welcome it as an essential part of British democracy.