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By Chris Moncrieff - 30th December 2009
Over the festive season ePolitix.com is publishing some of the best articles and interviews of 2009 from our sister publication The House Magazine.
This classic column from veteran lobby correspondent Chris Moncrieff, first published in May, explains why journalist hang around in Westminster.
Why do meetings take so long these days? My good lady wife attends church meetings to consider a summer weekend next June – but the meetings take longer than the average cabinet session.
The best sort of meetings, of course, are those where everything is decided beforehand and those attending merely have to rubber stamp what has already been done.
It saves hours of very often pointless debate.
That was how things blissfully used to be when, in the mid-1980s, I became chairman of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
When the meeting assembled, we were given a list of things that had been done, nodded them through and, in under ten minutes or so, we went on our way rejoicing.
However, when I became chairman again some 15 years later, all that had changed. Something called 'the democratic process' had insinuated itself into the proceedings.
The result: every minuscule item had to be argued at great and tedious length, and worse, latecomers always managed to start the debate again.
And we were lucky if we got away in under an hour – often it was considerably more than that.
I was in charge, also, during the period, a few years ago when the Press Gallery was being comprehensively refurbished. I can recall sitting at meetings with engineers, architects and planners of all shapes and sizes, in a total fog (that was me, not them) about what was going on.
I was shown charts and maps and diagrams, which, as far as I knew, might just as well have been Sir Christopher Wren's outline plans for St Paul's Cathedral.
The worst part of it was that I could not think of ANY, let alone intelligent, questions to ask.
Incidentally, let us consider why we, the press, are at Westminster at all. It is not that we are part of 'the democratic process', but that it is profitable for us to be there.
Newspapers, and indeed all media outlets, want stories, and what better place to gather them than in the Palace of Westminster?
The parliamentary estate is the source of more news stories than any other building in the land.
And, generally speaking, it has to be said, it is the stories which annoy the politicians the most which please our editors the most.
Very often editors respond to their critics by trying to claim that a story which is under fire is 'in the public interest'. Why should they bother?
In my view, a story is a good story if it is a good read and thus 'of public interest' rather than 'in the public interest'.
It is no crime to entertain the reader.
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I see that predictably the Scots have risen in wrath to the bait laid by the controversial historian Dr David Starkey, who on television described Scotland as "feeble" and denounced Robert Burns as "boring" and "provincial".
Some years ago, Starkey said that the description of him by the former Tory MP Jill Knight (now a peeress of the realm) as "the rudest man in Britain" was worth thousands of pounds to him. He simply revels in it.
That was why I was somewhat surprised that the Scots allowed themselves to be wound up by this man. I see that one of the complainants accused Dr Starkey of been "stuck in the past". Where on earth else did he expect a historian to be stuck?
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I would be much obliged if the renowned BBC Pronunciation Department (I trust it still exists) would have a quiet word in the ear of Jonathan Ross and remind him that the word is pronounced "news" not "noos" as Ross insists on saying.
They might similarly (if they dare, that is) take Sir Alan Sugar on one side and tell him that the word is "new" not "noo" as the terror of The Apprentice is wont to say.
Of course, neither Ross nor Sir Alan is anywhere near the same class as John Prescott, who now makes a positive virtue out of mangling even the simplest words.
One of my most vivid memories at Westminster is the occasion when Prescott, as deputy prime minister, had to make a Commons statement about Milosevic.
On the form he showed then, Prescott would have been a hit in the most daunting of all venues, namely, the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night. And that is some achievement.
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New or previously unheard-of political pressure groupings sprout up far more prolifically than the dreaded green shoots of economic recovery. The latest to greet us is an organisation called Climate Rush, whose members, earlier in the week, chose to glue themselves to a statue in the Central Lobby.
Does it do them, their cause, or indeed their clothes any good at all?
As in the case of Fathers 4 Justice their antics, although attracting widespread publicity, actually tend to create antagonism, rather than sympathy, from people at large.
I do not wish to be accused of inciting people to break the rules, but when people attach themselves to pieces of masonry in public places, it at least enlivens the proceedings.
I remember when Kelvin MacKenzie got it in the neck from a House of Commons committee for printing a story in The Sun which allegedly made a fool of a man who found himself glued to a lavatory seat.
The MPs changed their tune somewhat when Kelvin told them that the man had approached The Sun with the story himself.
And that, if I might make so bold, was a splendid example of a story that was 'of' rather than 'in' the public interest.
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Some 'insider sources', whoever they may be, are suggesting that David Cameron (if ever he does get to 10, Downing Street) has promised his shadow chancellor George Osborne that he will serve two terms as leader and then hand over the reins to Osborne.
This Machiavellian prediction (reminiscent of Blair and Brown) also says that by this time, Boris Johnson will be a threat to Osborne… and so on, and so on.
Don't believe a word of this claptrap. The only virtue in this soothsaying, is that the prediction is for "events" so far ahead, that no-one will remember that you got it all wrong.
Never predict something that might or might not happen in the next few days.
I once predicted the date of a general election, and got it wrong. I never heard the last of it.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd