The latest tactic Boris Johnson has lifted from the Trump playbook is televised press briefings with his personal spokesperson

A ‘White House-style’ briefing live from No 10 is expected to start in October. It will all end in tears, predicts John Rentoul

The daily coronavirus briefings were popular, but daily updates led by a spokesperson are a rather different prospect (EPA)

Is this the final nail of Americanisation in our politics or a long-overdue step towards greater openness and accountability?

A “White House-style” televised daily briefing of journalists by the prime minister’s spokesperson is expected to start in October. Fittingly, this was reported by journalists today citing anonymous Downing Street sources.

Televising the daily briefing was considered by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s press secretary, as he tried to reset the relationship between the Labour government and the media around the turn of the century. Blair and Campbell decided against it, because it would have made Campbell even more the star – and increasingly the villain – of his own show. Instead, Campbell went in the opposite direction, appointing a civil servant to answer journalists’ questions at daily briefings in an attempt to take some of the political heat out of the exchanges, which were put on the record but remained off-camera.