There is one passage in Andrew Roberts's superlative biography of Lord Northcliffe - founder of the Daily Mail and quondam owner of the Times - that has set me thinking.
Roberts cites an essay written by Northcliffe in 1903, in which the press baron writes about the dangers of newspaper proprietors getting too close to politicians. The two species were ‘best kept apart’.
In another passage, Roberts relates that Northcliffe spurned an invitation from Winston Churchill, then a rising young politician, to join a new dining club called the Other Club. Northcliffe replied that he had come to the conclusion that newspaper owners ‘should not belong to clubs of any kind’. He had given up all his club memberships.
There aren't many press proprietors left, of course. Of those who do remain, some wisely follow Northcliffe's example.
Others don’t. I was astonished to
read a recent article by Sarah Vine (former wife of Michael Gove) about a crucial dinner party in early 2016 in
Boris Johnson’s house, at which the
chief topic of conversation was
whether Boris should endorse Brexit.
For reasons Vine says she can’t fathom, Lord Lebedev, the controlling shareholder of the Independent and the London Evening Standard, was among the handful of guests.
Northcliffe did, in fact, have some political friends, but for the most part he avoided intimacy with politicians because he feared that they would expect favourable treatment in his newspapers and give him very little in return. What is true of press proprietors is equally true of political journalists – not least columnists.
In his enthralling autobiography Tricks of Memory, the late Peregrine Worsthorne recounted how, when he was given a column on the newly launched Sunday Telegraph, the editor advised him to reserve a table at the Connaught Hotel in London – then, as now, outrageously expensive – to lunch Cabinet ministers and the like. The food and wine were excellent, but Perry learnt very little from such people.
Politicians seldom reveal to journalists secrets that they aren’t on the brink of telling the world. Occasionally, ministers will offer a titbit to a columnist or political editor whom they know well, and trust. For example, I remember that in 1990 the Independent’s star political columnist, Peter Jenkins, was aware of Michael Heseltine’s machinations against Margaret Thatcher several days before they were made public.
But ministers will pass on information – it may well be damaging gossip about colleagues – only when it suits them to do so. What they want above all is to neutralise future criticism, to charm a political journalist so that if they later run into trouble, they may have allies in the press, or at any rate fewer enemies.
Being only human, some journalists are susceptible to flattery. They like being close to power, and feeling they are more than mere observers. Sly politicians will encourage such vanity. Don’t be ensnared! Former Daily Telegraph editor Max Hastings has described how, when he was being rather rude to John Major while calling him ‘Prime Minister’, Major invited him to address him as ‘John’. Hastings replied that he would go on calling him ‘Prime Minister’ out of respect for his office, not him.
Is it worth wining and dining politicians? Not if you are hoping for state secrets. In the course of countless lunches and dinners with ministers over the years, I can’t remember learning any – though possibly it was because I asked the wrong questions.
What you undoubtedly do get, though, is an insight into character. I recall one dinner with Gordon Brown at which other journalists were present. As he was Chancellor, and I had drunk a fair bit, I asked him rather aggressively whether he had any notion of the time and trouble self-employed people like me were obliged to spend completing their VAT returns. He looked blank. I might as well have been discussing the finer points of cannibalism with a vegetarian. That taught me a lot about the man.
There’s no harm in journalists’ breaking bread with politicians as long as they don’t forget that they are nearly always being used.
How times have changed! It seems now to be almost universally accepted by the press, not excluding the red tops, that the private lives of leading politicians are entirely off-limits.
There was quite a hullaballoo when it was revealed in 2006 that Liz Truss had had an affair a couple of years earlier, as a married woman, with a Tory MP called Mark Field. Mr Field’s marriage subsequently collapsed. Even though Ms Truss wasn’t yet an MP, there was a lot of uncharitable coverage.
And yet during the Tory leadership contest there was very little reference to the unusual private life of a woman who is now our Prime Minister. I read several profiles that didn’t even mention the affair.
The News of the World is dead, and the surviving Sunday red tops have become poor, frail things, recycling stories about C-list celebrities.
So politicians can sleep peacefully in their beds – or in anyone else’s.
