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During a 23 year career with the BBC, and 43 years in journalism, (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor Welshman Phil Parry, it has always been central to realise that almost no real information comes out of big set-piece political occasions, like Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), or First Minister’s Questions (FMQs) in Wales, and the substantive news is discovered by diligent work from investigative journalists like him.
There is enormous hoo-ha about them, but in reality almost NOTHING new comes out of them!
I am talking, of course, about big set-piece political events such as in the House of Commons (HoC) yesterday, or First Minister’s Questions (FMQs) in Wales.
You only get real knowledge of what may be about to happen, by talking to officials or close political allies, looking at official documents, and secret filming.
These big political occasions are just a way of appealing to voters, and even then they may not be received as intended.
Yesterday was a case in point when there was enormous coverage of Andy Burnham, but he was actually saying things to fire up his base, and virtually nothing substantial was said to persuade a voter in the home counties to put his or her cross by the Labour candidate.
Quite the reverse.
Mr Burnham kicked off his statement to MPs by paying tribute to his predecessor Sir Keir Starmer, who had announced he was resigning as MP for Holborn and St Pancras just hours earlier, prompting big headlines.
Afterwards he also outlined plans for “stronger public control” of essential services.
Sir Keir had apparently given the UK “a lifetime of service” (which is TOTALLY vacuous), such as delivering the Hillsborough Law which demands more accountability from public officials during official inquiries, as well as work to achieve peace in Ukraine.
He also praised Sir Keir for leading Labour to one of its “best victories” in the 2024 election, and that he had “created a platform to change this country for the better” which the new UK Government would “use well”, all of which are COMPLETELY empty phrases!
The little Mr Burnham did say of substance (and you had to rely on newspaper coverage for this), was seeming to blame Brexit for poor productivity today, and seizing on supposed mistakes by Margaret Thatcher.
This resulted in poor headlines in right-wing papers today like the Daily Mail as well as the Daily Telegraph, and factual, but still damaging, headlines in left-of-centre newspapers like The Guardian.
Brexit may or may not have been a mistake, but was still endorsed by more than half the voters in the 2016 referendum, and rightly or wrongly Mrs Thatcher is a heroine to many people, with papers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph being read by MILLIONS.
The problem at FMQs is a rather different one – it seems very small beer.
The result is the same, though, almost nothing substantial is said, and for that other methods have to be used.
At Plenary (full) in June the First Minister of Wales (FMW) Rhun ap Iorwerth declared “we will help those graduating now to get jobs” after Reform UK’s Dan Thomas raised the issue of 400 student nurses and midwives with no NHS jobs waiting for them.
Meanwhile Mike Hedges, a Labour MS (Member of the Senedd), called for restrictions on who should be able to own a rabbit – saying that people should have to take training courses before becoming owners.
So from rabbits, to empty phrases praising the previous Prime Minister (PM) – the end result is the same.
These big set-piece political events deliver nothing.
Turn to The Eye for the real news…
Truths like these by Phil, who was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – for a journalist like him it has become all the more important to check sources, because in the past photographs of figures with dubious individuals could be relied on as evidence of a connection, but now they cannot be because the picture might have been generated by a robot, and today the problem appears to be getting worse, with talk of AI even achieving a level of consciousness.
