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| Words mean little when the columnists come to power | |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| When a doctor MP has an opinion about the NHS, he or she (say, Sarah Wollaston) is usually listened to attentively. The same goes for lawyer MPs, economist MPs, academic MPs on their own special subjects. Political argy-bargy as usual postponed for at least 10 seconds. But journalist MPs – or, more specifically, newspaper columnist MPs? And, beyond that, column-writing prime ministers? These are very deep waters, Watson: a tsunami of chaos. | When a doctor MP has an opinion about the NHS, he or she (say, Sarah Wollaston) is usually listened to attentively. The same goes for lawyer MPs, economist MPs, academic MPs on their own special subjects. Political argy-bargy as usual postponed for at least 10 seconds. But journalist MPs – or, more specifically, newspaper columnist MPs? And, beyond that, column-writing prime ministers? These are very deep waters, Watson: a tsunami of chaos. |
| Nick Cohen prompted 31,800 tweets when he took the plunge here last week. Everything in the week just past posts his thesis on billboards a mile high: enter the pundit, exit any trace of reliability or common sense. | Nick Cohen prompted 31,800 tweets when he took the plunge here last week. Everything in the week just past posts his thesis on billboards a mile high: enter the pundit, exit any trace of reliability or common sense. |
| Michael Gove is an Aberdeen Press and Journal man who went on to columnise for the Times. He’s married to Sarah Vine, who writes a column for the Mail. Boris Johnson’s main job through life has been words on paper. He still takes £250,000-plus from the Telegraph for his weekly appearance – a stint that tops his old London mayor’s salary and current MP’s pay put together. His working life pre-politics reads Times, Telegraph and Spectator. | Michael Gove is an Aberdeen Press and Journal man who went on to columnise for the Times. He’s married to Sarah Vine, who writes a column for the Mail. Boris Johnson’s main job through life has been words on paper. He still takes £250,000-plus from the Telegraph for his weekly appearance – a stint that tops his old London mayor’s salary and current MP’s pay put together. His working life pre-politics reads Times, Telegraph and Spectator. |
| Also, remember that the Leave campaign’s stumbling litany of scrapped promises was started on day one by Dan Hannan, columnist-cum-leader writer for the Telegraph. (And, for the sake of fairness and balance, perhaps, don’t forget that Seumas Milne, on secondment from this parish, is director of communications and strategy for Jeremy Corbyn in a mad world where communication and strategy have seemed in perilously short supply). | Also, remember that the Leave campaign’s stumbling litany of scrapped promises was started on day one by Dan Hannan, columnist-cum-leader writer for the Telegraph. (And, for the sake of fairness and balance, perhaps, don’t forget that Seumas Milne, on secondment from this parish, is director of communications and strategy for Jeremy Corbyn in a mad world where communication and strategy have seemed in perilously short supply). |
| What’s the special expertise involved as columnists seek to inherit the Earth? What, indeed, was Michael Gove looking for when he operated as comment editor at the Times? There are two basic sorts of op-ed page contenders these days. One (a shrinking category) is analytical and expository. It aims to inform: either, like Gideon Rachman at the FT, by stripping down and laying out the big issues of foreign affairs, or, like Andrew Rawnsley, by talking to people off-the-record, analysing speeches and weaving views into a weekly thesis of explanation. | What’s the special expertise involved as columnists seek to inherit the Earth? What, indeed, was Michael Gove looking for when he operated as comment editor at the Times? There are two basic sorts of op-ed page contenders these days. One (a shrinking category) is analytical and expository. It aims to inform: either, like Gideon Rachman at the FT, by stripping down and laying out the big issues of foreign affairs, or, like Andrew Rawnsley, by talking to people off-the-record, analysing speeches and weaving views into a weekly thesis of explanation. |
| As we hack through the undergrowth towards category two, however, things grow much more exotic. This end of the spectrum sees the word of the columnist as some kind of holy writ. It aims to stir, provoke and irritate. It’s personal. It demands a reaction, and multiple page views around social media. It’s hot, not cool. | As we hack through the undergrowth towards category two, however, things grow much more exotic. This end of the spectrum sees the word of the columnist as some kind of holy writ. It aims to stir, provoke and irritate. It’s personal. It demands a reaction, and multiple page views around social media. It’s hot, not cool. |
| It’s Boris: the Boris who thought a couple of column-years ago that leaving the EU might “be globally interpreted as a narrow, xenophobic, backward-looking thing to do”. It’s the Gove who used to swear: “No, I’m not [running for PM]… I don’t want to do it and there are people who are far better equipped than me to do it.” Cancel all pledges and all pronouncements. | It’s Boris: the Boris who thought a couple of column-years ago that leaving the EU might “be globally interpreted as a narrow, xenophobic, backward-looking thing to do”. It’s the Gove who used to swear: “No, I’m not [running for PM]… I don’t want to do it and there are people who are far better equipped than me to do it.” Cancel all pledges and all pronouncements. |
| But the game of setting the current wisdom of Gove or Boris alongside the wisdom of 10 months or minutes ago is a flimsy gambit. It assumes that what they averred then is opinion immutable – that, politically, it actually means something. On the contrary, columns like Boris’s are supposed to turn turtle insouciantly. They are weather vanes of public opinion. | But the game of setting the current wisdom of Gove or Boris alongside the wisdom of 10 months or minutes ago is a flimsy gambit. It assumes that what they averred then is opinion immutable – that, politically, it actually means something. On the contrary, columns like Boris’s are supposed to turn turtle insouciantly. They are weather vanes of public opinion. |
| That doesn’t mean that, in their own terms, they aren’t important, indeed often instantly serious. When Sarah Vine in the Mail reveals what Michael said when he got out of bed on Brexit morning, that’s seriously instructive. Kelvin MacKenzie has the brass neck to announce that he wishes he hadn’t voted Leave after all. Some vituperation – Katie Hopkins in the Sun and on radio – recaptures the depths of the actual campaign in an evocative trice. “I’m sick of all this liberal whining because you lost… so suck it up”. | That doesn’t mean that, in their own terms, they aren’t important, indeed often instantly serious. When Sarah Vine in the Mail reveals what Michael said when he got out of bed on Brexit morning, that’s seriously instructive. Kelvin MacKenzie has the brass neck to announce that he wishes he hadn’t voted Leave after all. Some vituperation – Katie Hopkins in the Sun and on radio – recaptures the depths of the actual campaign in an evocative trice. “I’m sick of all this liberal whining because you lost… so suck it up”. |
| Columnists tend to have bouncing egos. Columnists send indiscreet emails (true fruit of the Vine). Columnists like keeping their editor (maybe Dacre) sweet; or their publisher (maybe Murdoch) on board. Newspaper bosses are big cheeses in their lives – and therefore artificially revered, the elite’s elite. Columnists run other columnists down for a living, but they don’t run things for themselves. Columnists aren’t natural contenders for big organisational jobs. | Columnists tend to have bouncing egos. Columnists send indiscreet emails (true fruit of the Vine). Columnists like keeping their editor (maybe Dacre) sweet; or their publisher (maybe Murdoch) on board. Newspaper bosses are big cheeses in their lives – and therefore artificially revered, the elite’s elite. Columnists run other columnists down for a living, but they don’t run things for themselves. Columnists aren’t natural contenders for big organisational jobs. |
| But crucially, the ability to change your mind – the ability to be consistently inconsistent – is basic. You can’t keep saying the same thing or playing the same tune. That’s boring. Light a bonfire of the experts. | But crucially, the ability to change your mind – the ability to be consistently inconsistent – is basic. You can’t keep saying the same thing or playing the same tune. That’s boring. Light a bonfire of the experts. |
| Which is, perhaps, why British history is a trifle vestigial on columnist premiers, and why it’s unfair to blame the Gove-Johnson double-duplicity act for never telling us quite the same tale twice. If, like James Forsyth in the Spectator, you write a column lauding the “calm” and “bonding” of the pair of them on the campaign trail, you need only press the delete button and start again. (A pity for Boris, it’s said, that the curse of the deadline meant he didn’t quite get last Monday’s effusion right.) Let the wastepaper bins of history bulge. They’re only doing their old job, after all. | Which is, perhaps, why British history is a trifle vestigial on columnist premiers, and why it’s unfair to blame the Gove-Johnson double-duplicity act for never telling us quite the same tale twice. If, like James Forsyth in the Spectator, you write a column lauding the “calm” and “bonding” of the pair of them on the campaign trail, you need only press the delete button and start again. (A pity for Boris, it’s said, that the curse of the deadline meant he didn’t quite get last Monday’s effusion right.) Let the wastepaper bins of history bulge. They’re only doing their old job, after all. |
| And meanwhile, in a cruder, more calculating part of the office, some editors do what they always do when their paid columnists start playing games. After a few private lunches, the great, expertly invisible Dacre takes another of his non-transparent decisions. Clear the front page. “It Must Be Theresa.” | And meanwhile, in a cruder, more calculating part of the office, some editors do what they always do when their paid columnists start playing games. After a few private lunches, the great, expertly invisible Dacre takes another of his non-transparent decisions. Clear the front page. “It Must Be Theresa.” |
| ■ A few statistics from last weekend tell the story. Newspaper sales, in the midst of political crisis, were up an average of 7% overall. The Guardian added 80,000 on Saturday, the Times 100,000. The Guardian broke all previous web records with 17.2 million unique visitors and 77 million page views on Leave Friday. The FT, which briefly knocked down its paywall, recruited six times the normal number of subscriptions in a trice. | ■ A few statistics from last weekend tell the story. Newspaper sales, in the midst of political crisis, were up an average of 7% overall. The Guardian added 80,000 on Saturday, the Times 100,000. The Guardian broke all previous web records with 17.2 million unique visitors and 77 million page views on Leave Friday. The FT, which briefly knocked down its paywall, recruited six times the normal number of subscriptions in a trice. |
| That doesn’t mean that broadcasters missed out. The Marr show on Sunday notched 2.7 million viewers. But it does, perhaps, illustrate the fact that democracy is a platform for many voices – and that when it’s in crisis we want to hear them all. | That doesn’t mean that broadcasters missed out. The Marr show on Sunday notched 2.7 million viewers. But it does, perhaps, illustrate the fact that democracy is a platform for many voices – and that when it’s in crisis we want to hear them all. |