The Imitation of Scrutiny

Today we were offered a rare glimpse into how political journalism and power really works in the UK

Something rather corrosive has happened in politics over recent years that has received little to no attention.

The reasons for that lack of attention will become clear, but it can be neatly illustrated by the following picture taken today by the great political sketch writer Rob Hutton.

The above is a pre-prepared list which represents the journalists that Rishi Sunak’s team decided that he would be willing to take questions from.

Now if you watched his speech you may have noticed that there were rather a large number of other journalists present at the event.

You may also have noticed that some of those journalists were desperately (and pointlessly) sticking up their hands to ask a question.

I say pointlessly, because unless they were on the above list, then there was virtually no chance of them ever being called to ask a question.

This is not how it has always been.