Haven't You Heard

by Marie Le Conte

  ‘The John Whittingdale story was a classic,’ says Wheen. ‘I mean, that went through so many different newspapers …The Mirror spent ages on it, got a lot of evidence of him being with this woman when he was a minister, and indeed when he was chairing the Culture Select Committee, taking her to events, travelling to things like the MTV awards, the BAFTAs, and they thought, well, this is a really good story. Top Tory and he’s sleeping with a woman who gets paid to whip people in a basement in Earl’s Court.

  ‘Months passed, they got all the evidence, but the lawyers just went round and round in circles saying, “Well, how can we justify this?” Especially now, you know, newspapers are under more threat than ever because of Leveson. There’s so many people who want to close us down and say we’re being irresponsible, so how can we justify putting this? And so they really tried to think, well, is there a security risk? Not really. And so they didn’t run it. And then the Independent, when Amol Rajan was editor, was going to run a big story about how the Mirror had suppressed this story about Whittingdale. But then the Independent suppressed it in turn, for exactly the same reason that the Mirror had … The lawyer said, “Well, I don’t think we can justify this.” And Amol decided that it would just be more trouble than it was worth, trying to justify it.

  ‘And so it then became a story about how the Independent had suppressed the story about how the Mirror had suppressed the story about a senior Tory MP having an affair with a spanking prostitute. And I then did a thing about it in the Eye.’

  The story was then followed up by everyone else, and became about the relationship between the media and politicians, and what counts as a story; two things which journalists tend to resent having to write about. This was a particular coup for the Eye, but was hardly out of the ordinary. As a magazine, it does pride itself on not adhering to the media ethos of lupus non mordet lupum (‘the wolf does not bite a wolf’), and will merrily use its ‘Street of Shame’ column to write about the actions of fellow hacks. They are also not in the lobby, so do not feel the need to write up a story given to them purely because of its news value, even if it means being voluntarily spun by whomever their source is.

  ‘I don’t like it when I feel I’m being used,’ explains Adam Macqueen. ‘I always want to be doing a story because I think it’s a story. And there’s that lobby thing of – there’s always a pay-off – you’re part of the story that someone is trying to push, and I think Private Eye should always be very resistant of that. A lot of the stuff I’m fond of doing is questioning why people are telling me things, and trying to work out what their motivation is. Because a lot of it is, with the sort of stories we do on “Street of Shame” particularly, people who have been passed over for a job and they want to get their own back on the person who’s then got that job. That’s not a terrible motivation; I wouldn’t rule it out as a story for me. But it’s just whether they were being fairly fucked over or not.’

  Another thing to take into account is whether they will get sued or not (and whether getting sued for that story is worth it). Much like the diaries, Private Eye is seen as a place that enjoys drama and mischief so much that going out against them all guns blazing can almost certainly only end badly for you and not them. They are also an accepted part of the media ecosystem; if you become important enough in journalism or political circles, you are bound to get written about eventually – after all, few in this parish truly are whiter than white.

  ‘First time I was written about in Private Eye, someone inexplicably sold a very boring Facebook status of mine to imply something weird about [his then-employer] BuzzFeed not being diverse enough,’ says the Guardian’s Jim Waterson. ‘I was quite upset, and then when it happened two or three years later, I was thinking, Oh, it’s quite nice to know that they’re still interested really.’

  Not everyone is as calm about it as Waterson, though – from full-on legal threats to the occasional tentative shove, the magazine has to deal with an entire spectrum of responses. According to Adam Macqueen, ‘Most people take it as a badge of honour, most people are quite happy about it. Some people get really, really cross, and they get cross in different ways. So the worst people that threaten to sue you are tabloid journalists – they really, really hate being written about. And normally, quite low-ranking tabloid journalists. Once they’ve got up to editor standard, most of them ignore us completely; you’ll get the odd whingey letter.’

  Former editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre, for instance, who has been written about in probably every issue of Private Eye for the last 23 years, never comments on anything, except for twice when it’s been full-on legal threats. ‘It’s never actually got to legal action, but it’s been that kind of tone of things. Mostly what you get is more “in sorrow than in anger” things. You get a lot of that, the blanket denial: “You just got the story completely wrong, you’ve made yourself look really stupid!” And then obviously you write back and ask: “What were the specific bits that we got wrong? Let’s try and sort this out.” At which point they kind of say, “Oh no! I don’t want to make a fuss.”’

  This is because Private Eye stories do tend to be true, and their sourcing usually is reliable, and everyone knows that. Speaking of which, how exactly do they get their sources? After all, they are not physically in Westminster as much as other journalists, and their tendency not to do anyone any favours should be coming back to bite them in the arse. This is where the Eye lunch comes in; the one that proved to be such a disaster for our friend John Hemming. A long-standing tradition, it takes place every two weeks at a venue in Soho, and brings in about a dozen hacks, politicos, past, present and future sources, and some of the Eye’s journalists. Though not always raucous, they can be frankly boozy affairs, and some attendees have been known to leave well into the afternoon, and pretty well refreshed as well.*

  If you are invited to a lunch, it seems only polite to try and come up with a decent story to drop into the lap of one of the in-house hacks once there – one should sing for one’s supper. That being said, it will not be held against you if you don’t, and Eye hacks are more than happy to play the long game if needed.

  According to Adam Macqueen, ‘It’s not necessarily a direct pay-off, a lot of it is getting a kind of tone of what’s going on. It’s more like a sort of general editorial conference discussion; it’s what people are generally getting exercised about, or what they’re interested in, that is going on in the news at that point. You can take something from that. Some of it is just from stuff they assume that everyone else knows and don’t realise because they’re so close to the area, that it’s actually quite exciting, and at that point your ears prick up. And some of it is just buttering people up to be contacts later at some point. That indefinite point where you think, How can I check this story out? Hang on, that person came to lunch and they will take a call from me.’

  Francis Wheen, meanwhile, recalls inviting a baroness to a lunch roughly a decade ago, and not hearing anything for years: ‘and she suddenly got in touch recently, emailed out of the blue, and said, “Oooh, this might interest you. Yeah, I think it might be a really good story for you.” Ten years afterwards, she’s paying for her lunch, she’s finally come up with something.’

  This brings us to a wider question: why do people leak information and pass on gossip to journalists they know will publish it? After all, conflicts are rarely solved by being played out in the press. There is always a reasonably high risk of getting caught, and if the fights are internal, any story that makes the opposite faction look bad will also make your entire side look bad. Still, people leave documents in photocopy machines, they whisper over pints and they take pictures of files then email them over. Westminster leaks like a sieve and most people don’t really trust each other as a result. It would be easier for everyone to keep secrets secret, so why don’t they?

  ____________

  * This is something the staffer quoted above is aware of. She recalls being told in March 2018 that then cabinet minister and l
eading Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom was about to launch a coup against Theresa May, and that it was due to happen at the Blue Boar the following Monday. Some days passed, Monday arrived and Liz Truss, a different cabinet minister, helped launch a free-market think tank called Freer at the Conrad, the hotel which owns the Blue Boar. If this was an attempted coup, it was a subtle one.

  * This was especially fun for Scottish MPs in the days when the House would sit until late on Thursdays. As former MP Lord Foulkes recalls: ‘It was fairly regular for the Scots to rush to the sleeper train for 11:50 and then go up to Glasgow and Edinburgh. I’ll tell you, there was an awful lot of gossip in the sleeper, because there was a lounge car where you could have a drink with your colleagues and share the gossip of the week.’

  * As we will keep seeing throughout the next chapters, this is a constant: question the efficiency of the informal all you want, but it normally only comes into play when the formal has become too ineffective or redundant.

  * There is a general understanding in the British media that unless they are dramatically newsworthy, personal stories about special advisers are not to be printed, given that they aren’t technically public-facing and cannot defend themselves while in post. This book agrees that it is a sensible way of operating, but will add that it really does not mean that the personal lives of spads do not play a role in how they work.

  * As Hugh Robertson MP puts it: ‘The first time I set eyes on the people who were going to be working closely with me and running my life on a day-to-day basis was when I walked through the door.’

  * Bowles himself called this ‘not altogether unfair – except to nurses at mental clinics’.

  * It frankly seems odd that the House of Lords’ chief clerk would be called the Clerk of the Parliaments and the House of Commons’ equivalent the Under Clerk of the Parliaments, but that’s beside the point.

  * The author would like to thank the MPs who decided to launch a new centrist party mere months after this book was written. No, really, it was brilliant timing. Thanks.

  * Another political correspondent who mentioned the story said that the lobby jolly well thought that Mills and Jowell’s separation was largely done for show, but did not do anything about that either.

  * Seriously. This felt like a good hypothetical example to choose at the time.

  * This was proved during one of the interviews for this book, when the face of a young Tory MP lit up as Shipman got mentioned in passing, and he wistfully said, ‘Oh, I’ve never met Tim before, but hopefully one day I’ll get to talk to him!’

  * Said special adviser was widely liked by the lobby and has had a great career since leaving government, so if you are reading this to plan your future political career, this is advice you should keep in mind.

  * They might even do that if they think you are having a fling which, one could argue, means that you might as well have a fling anyway.

  * All of these people could be named but will not; firstly, because none of those liaisons are ongoing or newsworthy, and secondly, because the author does not wish to make more enemies than she already has.

  * Another hypothesis, not backed by any academic or scientific evidence as far as the author knows, is that a lot of people who work in politics are weird nerds who did not get to sleep around at school and university and are so baffled to find themselves suddenly popular that they are desperately making up for lost time.

  * Rumour has it that the clerks have a list of MPs known for mistreating their kind; it is a true credit to their attachment to secrecy that it has somehow yet to leak.

  * As a bonus, it is said that in the Cameron years, one MP who was planning to rebel on an important vote was summoned to the whips’ office. Once there, he was given an envelope. He opened it, looked at its contents and fainted.

  * As a matter of fact, several interviews for this book were conducted in the House of Commons and became noticeably less interesting once the MP realised that their whip had just sat at a table behind them.

  * They can, however, keep their party leader informed of what their MPs are actually up to, even if it displeases them. One of the few wryly funny lines to come out of Westminster’s #MeToo scandal was the revelation that whenever Chief Whip Gavin Williamson would have his weekly mischief-makers meeting with Theresa May, she would respond with a weary, ‘Why can’t they just do their jobs?’

  * A few stories did come out of the ’22 exec when Theresa May was on the verge of leaving, but every rule needs an exception.

  * For the more sheltered among us, a ‘sugar baby’ is a young woman seeking usually older and wealthier men to develop a dating relationship with, in exchange for a weekly or monthly stipend.

  * Apologies to current and future spinners reading this: your secret is out.

  * Asked about the incident, Tom Watson said that while he does not recall any physical fighting, he does remember that night and that Whelan was wearing a kilt, which he lifted at Mrs Watson. What a clarification.

  * The author can confirm that one of the most eyebrow-raising work emails to ever land in her inbox was a cheerful ‘Can you get us some urinal-wanking/cock spots, etc?’ from the Popbitch editor on the eve of a party conference.

  * A pair of them once got along so well at the Eye lunch that they decided to drop by the bathroom for a quick shag before leaving, which shows impressive dedication to the epicurean lifestyle.

  PART 4

  PROCESSES

  ‘I suppose the image of Westminster to everyone outside is that we’re all wheeling and dealing and back-stabbing in the corridors and yeah, that is how the majority of business gets done.’

  – Anonymous Labour MP

  DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

  Before getting into the thorny topic of leaking and briefing in Westminster, let us take a quick step back and look at society at large. In 2012, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, set out to study gossip, its purpose and the effect it has on people who engage in it. In a series of four experiments, they put a number of participants through several different scenarios, all of which involved watching two people playing a game, and one of them cheating without the knowledge of the other.

  In the first one, participants were hooked up to heart rate monitors which showed that their heart rate went up when they realised one person was cheating. Given the opportunity to pass a ‘gossip note’ to the person playing honestly, most of them did it, and their heart rate decreased as a result. According to co-author of the study Robb Willer, ‘Passing on the gossip note ameliorated their negative feelings and tempered their frustration. Gossiping made them feel better.’

  In the second one, participants were first asked to fill in a form about their level of altruism and cooperativeness, then watch a game where one player was cheating. As lead author Matthew Feinberg then explained, ‘The higher participants scored on being altruistic, the more likely they were to experience negative emotions after witnessing the selfish behavior and the more likely they were to engage in the gossip.’

  The third experiment was similar, but with an added twist: the game between one cheater and one honest player remained, but this time participants were told that they would lose the money they were due to make from the study if they passed a gossip note, and that even if they passed the gossip note, it would not alter the overall score of the cheater. Still, a large majority of them actively decided to lose money in order to (righteously) gossip.

  The fourth one kept the setting, but turned the dynamic on its head. This time, participants were playing the game and using raffle tickets to do so, which would later be entered in a draw for a prize of $50. Some of the players were told beforehand that there would be a break during the game, and that observers would be able to pass gossip notes to other players at that point if they’d noticed anyone cheating. As a result, virtually all participants acted more generously during the game, especially those who had received a low score on altruism in their questionnaire.

  According to Willer
, the conclusion of these four experiments was that ‘when we observe someone behave in an immoral way, we get frustrated, but being able to communicate this information to others who could be helped makes us feel better.’

  So there you have it: gossip is positive, both internally and at a societal level, when it is explicitly about witnessing something bad happening and wanting to tell others in order to either warn them or try to ensure that the person who did the bad thing will not be getting away with it. This is fairly uncontroversial, and the reason why we celebrate (most) whistle-blowers as people who saw something that was wrong and decided to do what was right.

  The only thing is that, well, there are two kinds of wrong: sometimes, something is factually, unarguably wrong and everyone will happily agree that the thing in question could not be anything but bad. They are the minority. In most cases, ‘wrong’ is subjective, and its status will depend on, among others, a person’s morals, beliefs, connection to the thing, and which side of the argument they are on. One man’s wrong can be another’s grey area, or a justifiable and necessary evil, and so on.

  And this is all before getting into the fact that this study only looked at one subset of gossiping, and there are plenty of other reasons why people might want to spread confidential information around. Some of them will be unequivocally bad – say, it will make your opponent look worse in the eyes of the public if a certain something were to get printed – while others will seem selfish at first but be done for the greater good, and a whole lot of it will just be neutral, and done for the pure (and noble) purpose of entertainment.

  On top of this, there can be external reasons why someone might decide to gossip about something, even if they don’t necessarily want to do it. The whisper network mentioned earlier is probably the starker example of this: if there are no formal structures in place to efficiently get rid of creepy parliamentarians, warning potential future victims over a drink might well be the best course of action, even if it feels like a devious one. This logic can also work in murkier contexts: if, say, you’re a junior person working for a political party and you are certain that a policy will go down badly but you aren’t important enough to be listened to, what do you do? Pre-emptively leaking it to the papers while it is still only a potential policy can be one way of doing it. Your superiors won’t appreciate it, though, so you must be clever about how you do it.