How Twitter has opened up Westminster journalism

The idea that the lobby is a semi-secret club conspiring with the government against the people no longer has significant purchase on the public imagination

One of the many wonderful things about Twitter is that it has opened up and demystified “the lobby” – the system by which some journalists are given access to the Palace of Westminster, including the Members’ Lobby (hence the name), and to briefings by the prime minister’s spokesperson.

Once upon a time the lobby was regarded with suspicion by anti-establishment types – including The Independent when it was founded in 1986. The newspaper made a great show of refusing to take part in lobby briefings, although it still maintained an office in the House of Commons.

I think the objection in those days was that lobby briefings were unattributable. Those were the days of talking buildings, when the press was full of “Downing Street says” this, that or the other. At some point, before I became part of the Independent’s political staff in 1995, we had given up our boycott – I think because it was agreed that the prime minister’s official spokesperson could be quoted as “the prime minister’s official spokesperson”, although we were not allowed to name this person, or one of his deputies if they were standing in for him.

That rule persists to this day. It is well known that James Slack, the former political editor of the Daily Mail, is the prime minister’s official spokesperson (PMOS), and that he usually holds the daily briefings. But we are not allowed to put his name to his words in those briefings – they may be attributed to him only by his title.

I don’t have a problem with that, because he or his deputies are speaking for the prime minister and not for themselves. The rule comes under strain only when Seumas Milne, the Labour Party’s executive director of strategy and communications, gives similar briefings on behalf of the leader of the opposition. In his case, he is a significant adviser on policy to Jeremy Corbyn, with known political views of his own.

Anyway, the point I was making is that the lobby system has been made transparent by Twitter. Almost all lobby journalists are on Twitter, and so take part in the continuous and open conversation to which everyone can listen, and in which all can at least try to take part.

That means that the idea the lobby is a semi-secret club conspiring with the government against the people no longer has significant purchase on the public imagination. If someone founded The Independent today it would be simply eccentric for it to boycott the lobby.

In that respect if in no other, Twitter has been an important step forward for our democracy.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator