Laugh if you must, but a government obsessed with controlling the news is not communicating with the public

Given the nature of our political debate, and the centrality of our media to it, someone new will very shortly become the talk of Westminster and Whitehall – and instantly quite famous throughout the land. The moment he, or more likely she, is appointed, the name of Boris Johnson’s new government spokesperson will trend on Twitter and be the subject of press profiles galore, many headlined on the theme “is this the person to get the Johnson government back on track?”

I say she, by the way, because the nightly taxpayer-funded focus groups – one of the many scandals about this government that appears to go barely noticed or challenged – have started to grumble at the overwhelmingly male and stale faces served up to them.

Most of the mainstream media will indulge happily in the orgy of coverage; they love nothing better than a political story that is essentially about them, and doesn’t involve having to look too closely at complicated policy issues. But parliament should be very worried about the prime minister’s decision (I am assuming he was consulted by the Michael Gove/Dominic Cummings axis seeking to gather all power at the centre) to appoint someone to speak on camera on his behalf every day, because it is all part of a broader plan to sideline MPs.

Parliament, you remember, is the sovereign source of power for which Brexit was supposedly fought and won. Unelected bureaucrats out; power of elected MPs in. No matter that the unelected bureaucrats attack was largely mythology, or that since then an unelected bureaucrat who has been found guilty of contempt of parliament, Cummings, wields far greater power than most if not all ministers. Nor can Johnson’s predecessor escape criticism: Theresa May’s government tried to get Brexit done without parliament having much of a say at all, but thankfully the courts had a somewhat more mature view of what a parliamentary democracy meant in practice.

But since Boris Johnson got rid of, and then replaced, her he has secured a reasonably-sized majority and barely hidden either his contempt for parliament or his determination to ensure it does not trouble his plans (whatever they may be, as he travels along merrily making them up as he goes).

Nobody can say they weren’t warned. The prorogation of parliament, and his lying to the Queen about it, happened well before the election that saw Boris Johnson returned to No 10. His purging of all the anti-Brexit rebels showed someone very different to John Major tolerating his “bastards” or Tony Blair thinking parliament had to have a place for people like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, no matter how tiresome their rebellions against the whip became.

Johnson has also abandoned the age-old tradition that ministers and prime ministers should resign if they lie at the despatch box. It would appear now to be a point in their favour, if they get away with it, and he seems to get a kick out of making his own lies ever more blatant.

His blocking of a peerage for former speaker John Bercow was a deliberate tactic aimed at encouraging others who want preferment to toe the line. His strategic line of attack against Keir Starmer seems to be that the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition appears not to realise that his job is to support the government – no matter how many mistakes it makes, lies it tells, or lives of elderly Covid-19 patients it loses. And then his attempt to get Chris Grayling into the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee showed once more that he really would like parliament to be much more like the Russian version than one that criticises, challenges and puts forward alternatives. It is in this context that the new spokesperson role should be seen.

The Covid-19 daily briefings served as a warm-up act. They were less about the provision of genuine public information and more about controlling the news agenda. Sadly, far too many among the media played along with it, failing properly to challenge the lies and scrutinise the consequences of the disastrous and deathly mistakes being made.

Johnson and Gove are essentially journalists who like to create stories and shape narratives. They are good at it, but it is far removed from the requirements of governing. What the new role will give them is someone able to push out a line to take, and get it onto the news agenda on their terms.

It is right that there should be proper communication with the public. But a government as obsessed with news management as this one – and yes, this is me speaking – is not interested in genuine communication. It is interested in controlling the debate and setting the news agenda on its terms. And it will be hoping to erode any sense that parliament should be the place where policies are outlined, and ministers challenged upon them.

Bercow’s successor, Lindsay Hoyle, needs to be on his guard and ready to risk his peerage. The minute the new policy is set out by the spokesperson, he needs to get the relevant minister into the House.

Sometimes it is wise to pay heed to criticisms people make of others to assess what they are like themselves. I speak here as a self-confessed control freak, aware that some will see irony in what I say. When Johnson was a journalist, he was close to the front of the queue of those who said New Labour was all spin, no substance; that we lied to get our way; that I had too much power; that we allowed polling to dictate policy; that we would not tolerate dissent; that we wanted to sideline parliament and run everything from a small clique around Tony Blair.

I would happily dispute all of the above, based on knowledge and experience, but the right, helped by parts of the left, pushed those kind of arguments so hard that there are plenty who believe them still. Journalist Peter Oborne was more critical than most of the New Labour modus operandi and my role within it. But even he has been clear that he sees the Johnson crowd as saying, doing and being far, far worse than anything we said, did or were.

The new spokesperson’s job will be to set the line that the Johnson-Cummings-Gove axis is demanding be toed. Whether they succeed will depend in part on whether the media is as tame and supine with them as they have been, in the main, with ministers.

I don’t envy whoever lands the role. Bye-bye private life. Bye-bye having your own views. Bye-bye the integrity and hold on truth that I’m afraid Johnson, like Donald Trump, does not want to defend. Turd polishing will be the order of the day.

It will be fun for a while – certainly more interesting and challenging than journalism, from where I imagine Johnson and his cabal thinks the new voice should come. But it will only work if parliament and the media allow it to. Given it is in neither of their interests, then it deserves to fail.

For the individual concerned, it should not go unnoticed that Donald Trump gets through spokespeople like struggling football clubs get through managers. I suspect Johnson will not be much different. He does so like to take any credit going and place the blame elsewhere.