What is the point of ‘anniversary journalism’?

Actually it can be a good way of measuring the passage of time and of sifting the parts of the past that are worth remembering, writes John Rentoul

Today is the fifth anniversary of the 'Ed Stone', Labour's electoral promises carved in rock (Getty)

I admit I used to think that articles about the 70th anniversary of the founding of the NHS (2018) or the 125th anniversary of the opening of Tower Bridge (2019) were a contrived form of journalism.

But it is different when I do it, so when one of my editors asked for an article about the 10th anniversary of Gordon Brown calling Gillian Duffy “a bigoted woman” in the 2010 election campaign, I said yes of course.

It is an artificial way of looking back at history, but it is the history, not the round number, that we are interested in. In that case, I thought it was interesting to look back at that incident in the light of everything that followed: you could see in Duffy’s resentment of EU free movement – and, just as tellingly, in Brown’s mistaking it for mere bigotry – many of the themes of the Brexit referendum and of the collapse of Labour’s red wall.

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the “Ed Stone”, the promises carved in a rock that were unveiled by Ed Miliband in the 2015 election campaign. That was one for the history books too, although possibly of less lasting significance, which may be why I wasn’t asked to write about it. Even so, if I had been, there must be some important lessons there for the way decisions are made by political parties during election campaigns: how a group of people can become so disoriented and disorganised that no one thinks it is their job to stop something that seems from the outside to be so evidently absurd.

Mind you, I did write about Keir Starmer’s first two weeks as leader. That “fortnightiversary”, I accept, was merely an excuse to take stock: parliament wasn’t sitting and one opinion poll had been published.

Anniversary journalism can be a good way of measuring the passage of time and of sifting the parts of the past that are worth remembering. One of my habits is to use Twitter to see what was happening a year ago (there’s a feature called Twitter Analytics that allows you to select a date), which at the moment provides a stark contrast with the present. A year ago today, the Conservatives lost hundreds of seats in the local elections: Theresa May had failed to take us out of the EU, and Boris Johnson was preparing his leadership campaign.

We can be sure that, in a year’s time, everything will be very different again. Perhaps I’ll write an article about the first anniversary of this article about anniversary journalism.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator