Haven't You Heard

by Marie Le Conte

  It is a lovely anecdote but there is one issue with it: all of those who tell it are unable to name the MP or even the bill. It is possible that the first few people who spread it around thought it was too good not to share but did not want to betray their friend, but it does seem likely that it was made up. To use a certain newsroom saying: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

  Talking to whips and former whips directly was a more underwhelming experience. When asked about whether they would ever leak a story about an MP on their own side, they all denied it, even when speaking off the record. It might well be that it is not in their interest to admit to such things, but there is also another possibility, which is that they know that regardless of how unhelpful an MP is being, making their own party look bad in the press is probably never worth it.

  This is what one of them had to say on the topic: ‘I was in the whips’ office for a number of years, and the role of gossip in the more benign sense is your job as a whip is to understand what’s going on in people’s lives, and whether that shapes their ability to do their job, so you’ve got to know a lot about people’s personal lives, but in the context of trying to help and understand where possible if someone has a family crisis or ill health.

  ‘In my time in the whips’ office I don’t remember there ever being a conscious plan to leak something about an MP. The whips’ office have got a serious job going running the business of the government in Parliament and keeping over 300 MPs onside and reasonably happy. Doing extra-curricular stuff is probably beyond what 17 people have really got the resources to do,’ was Greg Hands’ straightforward answer.

  So, again: why do whips collect all that information? The right answer might simply be that they want others to think that they have all that information. Academic Phil Cowley has done a lot of work on whips, which apparently pleased them:

  ‘Years ago, a senior Labour MP said, “The whips love your work because it makes it sound like they’re really important. That they’re doing lots of stuff.” And he said they’re not really; they’re never as omnipotent as they claim to be. It’s in their interest to claim to be omnipotent. And it’s somewhat even in the interest of MPs to claim they’re omnipotent, because then why did this rebellion fail? Well, you know, the whips got to us. As opposed to there just weren’t enough of us, and we’re shit. We were undone by the whips’ office and their terribly Machiavellian ways, as opposed to not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery.’

  Being able to look like you know absolutely everything clearly has its advantages, and you don’t even need to actually know everything to do so. As Cowley pointed out too, it is convenient for everyone that whips are portrayed in such a dramatic fashion. In order for this to work, they must be as opaque as possible about what they actually do know; revealing secrets to others might also accidentally reveal that you do not know the whole story.*

  Another reason why the whips might want to appear threatening is that there is actually not much they can do to keep the party in shape. They can say no when an MP wants to miss a day in Parliament for whatever reason, and they are in charge of office allocation, so can give MPs a shoebox in a mouldy corner of the estate if needed. At a push, they can also help you climb the ministerial ladder if that is what you wish and you have been a good boy or girl, but they can equally use that as a carrot without doing much to show for it afterwards. That’s it.

  The realisation that they are not in fact some all-powerful ‘Eye of Sauron’ outfit always comes to MPs at some point. Gyles Brandreth entertainingly explains this in his memoir; he was about to vote against the government on an amendment, and this is what happened next:

  ‘You know this will be noticed in the whips’ office, so think carefully before you do this.’

  ‘That’s not a threat, is it?’

  ‘No, but it does mean, well, we’ll look at you differently in the future.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, it means …’

  Pause.

  ‘…We will look at you in a funny way in future!’

  ‘And that’s the moment it dawned on me. I was once told the whips are all-powerful. Yet the reality is the whips are only as powerful as you choose to make them.’

  Isn’t this a far cry from the US remake of House of Cards? In a nutshell, whips are only a danger to those who are not of many talents but are dying to become ministers so must do so via patronage; those who really do behave appallingly, and who shouldn’t be in the Commons in the first place, and that’s it.

  In Cowley’s words: ‘The brighter ones have already worked out, there’s a line about the Spanish Inquisition, which is that most confessions came as soon as they saw the torture instruments. You didn’t actually need to deploy any of those things, because you’d look at it and go, “Oh, fair enough! Fair enough!” Insofar as the whips have weapons, which they don’t really have weapons, you know what they are.’

  It is all even more sedate in the House of Lords. One former adviser to the whips there explains: ‘Very rarely would people do the thumbscrews: “Here’s a bit of information I know about you.” That is properly rare. The main thing is actually knowing why someone’s going about something, or knowing the inter-relationships of people, thus knowing the networks. So you would make sure your whips’ office is comprised of all the different cliques. And you just needed one person in it, they didn’t need to be the leader; you needed to have the gossipy ladies, the smokers, the old hereditaries and all that. Having someone from each different gang meant that you were getting the information and the flow and who was feeling restless, because they were all connecting with each other externally as well, and catching up and seeing how they felt.’

  The other thing worth considering is that (most) MPs aren’t stupid: they know which personal problems to go to the whips with and which ones to hide from them. If what they need is advice from someone who isn’t just one of their friends, at least one party has a place to go: the 1922 Committee.

  The group was created in 1923 (don’t ask) and represents the backbenches of the Conservative Party. Funnily enough, its chairman at the time of writing is Sir Graham Brady, a former whip. ‘Most whips would think that they have a kind of a function in looking out for the welfare of colleagues as well as just making sure they vote the right way, but there is also an inherent conflict,’ he explains. ‘The whips’ office is there explicitly to serve the government, or the shadow administration if we’re in opposition. So if the interests of a colleague and the interests of the government are in conflict, or potentially in conflict, then the whips are always going to go with the government. So one could imagine a situation where a colleague has done or said something silly, something embarrassing … Do they go to the whips and risk the possibility that they’ll say, “Come on, we can’t stand behind you on this, or the government might look bad if we defended your conduct?” People might then come to me or one of the other members of the executive and just ask for a bit of advice and support.’

  Because the 1922 Committee is meant as a group representing Conservative backbenchers, its aims are somewhat different than that of the whips; until 2010, ministers weren’t even allowed to take part in meetings. Its executive is also formed of a number of MPs meant to represent the breadth of the party, both in terms of cliques and ideologies, and who are elected by their peers. The group of 18 parliamentarians meet once a week and interestingly, what they discuss genuinely is secret.

  ‘The great advantage of it is that if you have a full plenary meeting of the whole of the parliamentary party, then it’s very likely that somebody’s going to brief somebody on what’s been said, either formally or inadvertently,’ says one MP who is part of the committee. ‘The 22 exec very, very seldom leaks, so normally we can have a proper discussion, mirroring most strands of opinion in the party, and it doesn’t get out.’

  It could well be that what they discuss simply is too dull to leak, but the fact that we cannot know for sure remains tantali
sing, and also proof that MPs can occasionally keep their mouths shut if needed, which is frankly a bit of a surprise.*

  This conveniently brings us to our next part. We know that politicians can behave badly and we know that there are not many ways in which their peers or juniors can seek action; we know that most people in Westminster enjoy a good gossip and we know that a lot of them talk to journalists.

  This leaves one question: what gets published and why?

  HOW IS THIS NEWS?

  Asking political journalists what the difference is between gossip and news is an amusing thing to do, provided that you enjoy people searching for words and not quite finishing their confused sentences. That is because answering this means answering a number of questions, namely about what news is, what gossip is, and whether gossip stops being gossip when it becomes news.

  In Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit, Joseph Epstein takes a stab at (sort of) answering it. ‘A character in Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s novel about journalism, says of the news that it is what people want to read, except once it’s printed it’s no longer news and hence not of much interest,’ he writes. ‘The less widespread, the less well known, the news, the more potent, by virtue of its exclusivity, and the more interesting it is. Serious gossip ought to be an intimate affair, one person telling another, two or three others at most, something hitherto unknown about an absent person. Too widely broadcast, gossip, like the news once printed, no longer holds much interest.’

  In ‘Spin Doctors And Political News Management’, academic Thomas Quinn tackles the topic from the other side and concludes: ‘Political news is problematical. Unlike entertainment stories, which consumers enjoy for their own sake, the utility consumers derive from political coverage is not immediately evident. The minute probability of casting the decisive vote in an election implies that most individuals remain “rationally ignorant” about politics, relying on free information to determine their votes.’ Nevertheless, Quinn identifies three reasons why consumers might demand political news: duty, diversion and drama. ‘Some people feel a duty to become informed about politics. Others are fascinated by political strategy and facts in the way sports fans are interested in statistics. A third group views politics as a form of entertainment and enjoys the drama and human-interest elements.’

  Coming back to Westminster, one of the people who did manage to deftly answer the impossible question was Jim Waterson of the Guardian: ‘Gossip is anything of interest that’s not been published yet, or it’s the particularly interesting stuff which is too salacious but you could never get over the line. I mean, who’s shagging who – there’s no real public interest most of the time, but my God, we all want to know. And then there’s the sweet spot where gossip can be transferred into actual news by virtue of evidence.’

  Another good one came from the editor of a newspaper, who argued: ‘There’s no hard and fast rule where you draw the line. If gossip or personality stories are revealing of the character of a politician then they definitely cross the line and they get into print. So when, to give you a random example, it emerged that Samantha Cameron and Mrs Gove (columnist Sarah Vine) had had a stand-up row in public; that was gossip, but it was definitely a political story in the sense that it reflected the division between David Cameron and Michael Gove, and the fact that there was a rift between them that had not healed and is unlikely to heal even though I think they’re godparents to one another’s children. So that’s definitely gossip, but it’s definitely a story.’

  Let’s try to work on a closer definition. For something to be gossip, it needs to be a piece of information not known to many people. There can be exceptions, but in most cases, every new person who hears a piece of information decreases its value. It must be interesting, by which we mean unusual, titillating, or out of character for someone. It is not formal; even if, say, a government press release wasn’t read by many, what it says is not gossip. There is also an element of transgression; if the piece of information is something the person it’s about definitely wants spread, it also loses its value. Entertainment value is key here: boring gossip is no gossip at all. It can be first hand but doesn’t need to be; as a result, something does not need to be definitely true and provable to be a piece of gossip. If anything, unprovable alleged facts often make the best piece of gossip, which is why sex is frequently talked about in such terms; unless you were in the room, it is impossible, really, for someone to definitively say that something happened (or didn’t).

  Most of these things apply to news stories. A news story must also not be about something that is widely known; if it is, it is no longer news – the clue is in the name. There must also be an element of unusualness for something to turn into news; if something ordinary happens, it is not worth writing about. Similarly, a news story will only really be good if it can show an element of transgression; of something that shouldn’t have happened, or went wrong. So far, so similar, but there are also things that set the two apart.

  For a start, a news story must be true; it must have reliable sources, as much proof as possible, and the journalist must be able to defend the story and say with absolute certainty that the chain of events described, for example, was the correct one. The second and perhaps biggest difference is that a news story must be in the public interest. If you have all of the above but cannot show why a story needed to be published, you will not go very far. Some journalists have certainly been known to stretch the definition of ‘public interest’, but they still always know that they may need to make a case for it at some point.

  So, to sum up: a piece of gossip can also be a news story if it is definitely (and provably) true, and if publishing it is in the public interest. On the other hand, a news story can be gossip if it is fun on top of being relevant, and has not been published anywhere else before. This leaves journalists an awful lot of space to play with. Still, there are only so many hours in a day and journalists at an organisation, so they cannot just run absolutely everything that stands up and tickles their fancy, but what to pick?

  The Samantha Cameron and Sarah Vine example is a very good one, because many stories are built like it. Neither Samantha nor Sarah are politicians, so them no longer getting along should not be a political story. The fact that they had a public row is also not in itself that interesting: friends have rows all the time, and they are, again, not in any positions of power. The reason it is a worthwhile piece of information, and news, is because they are married to two prominent politicians who were very close friends prior to the referendum (as well as being Cabinet colleagues) and they no longer talk. That their political disagreement was so severe that it broke off the friendship of their wives is fundamentally interesting, because it tells us about how personally they both took their position on Brexit. Most politicians, especially those in the same party, and who already were friends before joining Parliament, can go through policy disagreements without losing their closeness. This story shows that Brexit was not only worryingly divisive in the country, but within the highest ranks of the Conservative Party as well.

  This is a template that is often used, and with good reason: a story may sound like pointless gossip to hard-nosed cynics, but if it reveals something about the wider character of someone in a position of power, then it is worth telling your readers. Oh, and on that note, if we’re talking about what is and isn’t a story, it is probably time to bring in the readers. As a matter of fact, what is and isn’t a story is decided by everything discussed above but also, and perhaps more importantly, by what will be a story for an organisation’s readers (or watchers, or listeners).

  The reason why no journalist managed to come up with a definitive, industry-wide answer to the question ‘what is news and what is gossip?’ is that there is none, and the line will move widely from one outlet to the other.

  ‘It depends entirely on whom you work for,’ says Jack Blanchard. ‘Where I work now, at [morning briefing on Westminster news] Playbook, what constitutes something I would put in the email is
very different to what it would have been in the Mirror, and would be very different to somewhere else. The line between gossip and a story changes depending on where you work and what the values are and the editorial judgements are of that place. So at the Mirror, I used to hear so much gossip, but only 5% would be of interest to the Daily Mirror readers. I used to think all the time, God, that’s a good story, but I would never be able to do anything with it, because people who buy the Daily Mirror don’t care about that Westminster tittle-tattle, 95% of the time. A lot of that stuff just never saw the light of day, because it wasn’t my job to report it then. They wanted real stories, that really mattered to people in the real world.

  ‘Now it’s completely changed. I work for Playbook and I write for people who live in the bubble and who are the bubble, and I write for those people and about those people. And so suddenly little titbits of gossip about people become something that I am interested in to publish, because I know that my readers are interested in, because it is them. It’s their mates, it’s their contacts, it’s their colleagues and so on. And I think you’ll find that at every publication. Something that I would consider gossip at the Mirror might be a story at The Times as well. And so it’s not a fixed thing, it depends on what your publication is interested in, and crucially, who you’re writing for.’

  Another thing that can wildly vary from publication to publication is the extent to which a story must be demonstrably true before getting published. While snobs might argue that the dividing line is between broadsheets and tabloids, it isn’t necessarily the case: the former have been known for publishing the occasional shoddy single-source story and the latter are mostly as scrupulous as their more highbrow neighbours. This is because the level of certainty required before a story definitely becomes one doesn’t just vary from outlet to outlet, but editor to editor.