No leaks, insider stories or catfights – what’s happened to politics?

It is quite a remarkable change of pace after the sieve-like administrations of the past few years, writes Marie Le Conte

The problem the current government has is that it is neither as chaotic nor as organised as its predecessors (PA)

At first I thought I was the problem. I still follow British politics closely, of course, but had perhaps been a bit slacker than usual since Rishi Sunak had taken over. His whole pitch had centred around restoring business as usual to Westminster and I, alongside many others, had breathed a sigh of relief.

There was no longer any need to be glued to the news every minute of every hour of every day. The country was probably not going to collapse in the time it usually takes me to have a bath.

Still, something felt wrong. Someone asked me to name a minor cabinet minister and I – a true nerd among nerds – wasn’t able to do so. Acquaintances outside the bubble asked me about what was going on around parliament and I couldn’t come up with any gossip, either gleaned from the papers or heard in person.

Last week, I started asking around. What was I doing wrong? Had my link to Westminster been severed in some way? Did I manage to cut myself off without meaning to? The answer was clear: no, it wasn’t just me. There’s just not a lot going on at the moment.

Well, that isn’t quite true: there is a lot going on in Britain. We have strikes and inflation and a cost of living crisis and sky-rocketing bills and a collapsing health system, and many other awful and depressing things I’m probably repressing. What has gone missing is the usual circus of SW1.

Sunak has been criticised for mostly keeping quiet since becoming prime minister, but the rest of his cabinet hasn’t exactly been outspoken, either – on or off the record. Similarly, this new crop of special advisers has seemingly gone underground, and rarely feature in insider newspaper stories.

Interestingly, no one seems to leak anymore. Cabinet meetings are no longer followed by frantic tweeting from lobby hacks eager to show their sources are best. Policies do get trailed but little is said on the disagreements and catfights between departments, or between ministers and No 10. In fact, it is quite hard to know what goes on in No 10, seeing as everyone who works there has suddenly become quite tight-lipped.

It is quite a remarkable change of pace after the sieve-like administrations of the past few years. It was never hard to know what was going on under Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Theresa May: if anything, it was often easy to feel like you knew too much about the minutiae of government. It felt undignified, like being forced to spend time with a compulsively oversharing acquaintance.

The Cameron years were quite different. The inner workings of his government were often a part of the story, but a rigid approach to grid planning usually managed to counterbalance the more salacious stories. Sure, there would be leaks about mistakes and infighting, but there would also be stories about what the government planned to do about X or Y.

Various cabinet ministers would appear on television and the radio to talk about their policy areas – with varying degrees of success – and it all seemed to work well enough until the referendum was announced.

The problem the current government has is that it is neither as chaotic nor as organised as its predecessors. That no one leaks today in the way that aides and MPs did until recently is a good thing, but it doesn’t amount to much if media slots aren’t filled with anything else. Because the country is in such a dire state, there is little they can do besides constant firefighting. At risk of stating the obvious, that is not a winning electoral strategy.

Blank space left in the press also means that both opposition parties and internal opponents of Sunak’s get to have their moments in the sun, as evidenced by the resurgence of Reform UK and mad plots to bring Boris back.

After all, politics is about narratives; the government is succeeding in not airing its dirty laundry in public, but it should be careful about the vacuum it is creating instead.