For journalists, has there ever been a better time to be alive? There is not enough airtime in news bulletins and enough space in newsprint to cover the post-Brexit political dramas.
Websites may have unlimited capacity, but reporting the twists and turns of Britain’s current political turmoil is proving to be a bandwidth-stretching exercise.
Ever since the EU referendum vote the so-called “daily news cycle” has been an irrelevance. Changes have occurred hour by hour. TV and radio schedules have been torn up to allow for extended news bulletins.
Even the instantaneous reporting on social media has been stretched in trying to chart the twists and turns of the Conservative party’s splits and Labour’s Brexistential crisis.
In an amusing reflection on current news overload, the Daily Telegraph’s Michael Deacon complained at the weekend about there being “too much news” and called for relief: “We’re all newsed out... this country needs a break.”
That just isn’t going to happen, given that so much is happening and, significantly, increased sales and online statistics point to a public appetite for the story.
Never has that overworked slogan about keeping calm and carrying on - the Queen’s plea, according (among others) to the Sunday Express - seemed less appropriate. This is a story to beat all stories for political reporters and, of course, their editors.
Sunday national newspapers reported on a series of plots and counter-plots within both the mainstream parties that surely served to confirm the widespread public disgust for both politicians and politics.
Senior Tories had united, reported the Sunday Times, in order to torpedo attempts to install home secretary Theresa May as party leader, and prime minister, in some kind of “coronation”.
Her two rivals - Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom - were said to have claimed that she lacked the “moral authority” to do the job.
That was straightforward compared to the far-fetched claim in Monday’s Times that May’s supporters believed Ukip “figures” or “elements” were plotting on behalf of Leadsom.
More pertinently, Leadsom was wrong-footed by Gove in publishing his tax returns. It prompted the Daily Mail to wonder whether it would sink Leadsom’s bid for the leadership and the Sun to suggest it “could derail the stunning momentum behind her campaign.”
Why? Because, wrote the Independent’s Andy McSmith, his newspaper revealed in April 2014 that a company created by Leadsom and her husband used controversial trusts to reduce her potential inheritance tax bill by taking advantage of offshore banking arrangements.
There was no question of illegality. The problem with her having used such a device is that it runs counter to her government’s attempts to crack down on tax avoidance.
Leadsom’s other embarrassment was revealed by the Mail on Sunday. In a 2013 lecture she said:
“I’m going to nail my colours to the mast... I don’t think the UK should leave the EU. I think it would be a disaster for our economy and it would lead to a decade of economic and political uncertainty at a time when the tectonic plates of global success are moving.”
On the Andrew Marr show, she said she had changed her mind after a closer study of the European Union. Whether that explanation is accepted or not, Leadsom has certainly discovered an uncomfortable reality: there is no hiding now she in the press spotlight.
One man who is rarely out of that spotlight, Boris Johnson, was clearly upset at being pushed into the shade for a couple of days. So, courtesy of his employer, the Daily Telegraph, he got front page coverage on Monday for a so-called “intervention” in the EU debate.
What it amounted to was an attack on his own government - in his regular column - for allowing “hysteria” to take hold following the referendum result.
But it was the column below Johnson’s, written by his former campaign manager, Ben Wallace, that gained most publicity because it was a full-frontal assault on Gove for betraying Johnson. Here’s the key sentence:
“Michael seems to have an emotional need to gossip, particularly when drink is taken, as it all too often seemed to be.”
In other words, Gove wasn’t fit to be prime minister because he had often leaked confidential information to the press. Wallace also pointed to the “infamous email from Sarah Vine, Michael’s wife, ‘accidentally’ finding its way to the papers.” (Note the quotemarks around accidentally).
When journalists turn to Labour, the same fractures are apparent. The Sunday Mirror carried a piece by Jeremy Corbyn in which he said he was “ready to reach out to Labour MPs who didn’t accept my election and oppose my leadership – and work with the whole party to provide the alternative the country needs.”
But it made no difference to Labour MPs, and grandees such as Neil Kinnock, who lined up to give TV and radio interviews in order to reiterate their demand that Corbyn stand down.
Obtusely, the Daily Mirror carried a spread on Monday claiming that Corbyn was “enjoying” the leadership crisis, citing a “senior ally” of Corbyn as its source.
But the Guardian’s front page story reported that Corbyn’s allies “are urgently seeking ways to avoid a historic split” and there “were some signs of a cooling off between the two sides.”
The paper cited “a source close to Corbyn” as saying there were discussions about how to make peace in the party.”
It would appear that all journalists have to do just now is put a microphone in front of any Tory or Labour MP and they can guarantee a further episode in this undignified story of Westminster hysteria. Talk about ferrets in a sack!
While this internal squabbling continues, the revelation in the Daily Express’s front page story may have greater significance in the long run. It picked up on an article in The Lawyer magazine about the law firm Mishcon de Reya preparing a legal action to prevent the government from withdrawing from the EU unless it does so by an act of parliament.
The action, on behalf of an unspecified “group of businesses”, would block the prime minister - whoever that might be - from triggering article 50 to institute Britain’s EU departure.
That will, of course, be fought. Lawyers were bound to get in on the act, thereby giving journalists yet more fodder in the coming months.
