When journalists go into politics


The roles of politician and journalist can involve similar aims and skills – and cutting through spin. Conrad Landin looks across the divide


W


hen Torcuil Crichton stepped into the House of Commons as the new MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles) last July, he was already a familiar face to the doorman. As a political correspondent and Westminster editor for a


series of Scottish newspapers from 2001 to 2023, Crichton became one of the longest-serving members of the lobby — the Westminster press pack with high-level access to politicians. But it was still a shock to the system. “I hate to deal in cliches as a journalist, but it really is through the looking glass,” he says. “You think you know it. You even think you know the building but, of course, as a journalist there are only certain parts of the building you go to and other parts as a politician.” Crichton — and fellow Commons newbies Paul Waugh,


Yuan Yang and John Cooper — join a long line of journalists who have put down the pen in favour of the sword of electoral struggle. Winston Churchill got his start at the Morning Post, while Michael Foot worked on the New Statesman, Tribune and the Evening Standard, serving as editor of the latter two. Diane Abbott, now mother of the house, worked as a reporter and researcher for Thames Television and TV-am, where she became mother of chapel in the mid-1980s. Many of those who have taken this well-trodden path speak of parliamentary politics as a means, like journalism, of holding power to account. “It helps to go into journalism or politics with an enquiring frame of mind,” says Chris Mullin, who edited Tribune and worked for Granada Television’s World in Action programme before becoming Labour MP for Sunderland South in 1987. “I come from that tradition of journalism that tries to look beyond the PR handout version of events, and I carried it on into politics too.” Mullin’s most high-profile journalistic campaign was to quash the convictions of the Birmingham Six, who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for the IRA pub bombings the previous year. In Parliament, he continued the campaign. “I now had the opportunity to confront those directly responsible for the criminal justice system, and I did so.” The six walked free in 1991. Russell Findlay, who was elected leader of the Scottish


Conservatives last September, had a stellar journalistic career at STV, The Scottish Sun and the Sunday Mail. He was also no stranger to the dangers faced by elected politicians in recent


18 | theJournalist


years, having been the victim of an acid attack in 2015 while reporting on Glasgow gang warfare. “The qualities of journalism, the skills of journalism, understanding complex issues, cutting through spin, understanding what makes people tick and being able to communicate with people and build trust with people — all of those skills are entirely consistent with being a good politician I think,” he says. Findlay, who says he has “ink running through my veins” and despairs over the “demise of the newspaper industry”, saw an opportunity to continue his work in the Scottish Parliament. “I knew that journalism could sometimes make


Gamekeepers turned poachers


MANY former politicians have developed careers as media personalities after crashing out of Parliament — but it’s questionable whether their output can be described as journalism. A slew of Conservative


MPs took up presenting on GB News before losing their seats or standing down from Parliament after the election, and continued as presenters. Former Labour cabinet


minister Ed Balls is now a regular breakfast television presenter, and attracted outrage when he was allowed to interview his wife Yvette Cooper, now home secretary. Others have returned


to or embraced journalism


more straightforwardly. Jennie Lee worked for Tribune and the Daily Mirror after losing her seat in 1931, returning to the Commons in 1945. Michael Gove, who went


on strike as a young journalist at DC Thomson in 1989, stepped back into journalism almost as soon as he quit the Commons this year as editor of The Spectator.


Bill Deedes, who, as a


young journalist was believed to have inspired the character of William Boot in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop, served in the cabinets of Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home. He went on to edit the Daily Telegraph from 1974 to 1986. “I went back onto


investigations, I went right back into a column,” says former MSP Dorothy-Grace Elder. “It was at the Express – they gave me a deal that they were not going to impose their hyper-Toryism at that time. At that stage, papers wanted a voice that was normally against their line.” She carried on campaigns


she had spearheaded in Parliament — including on chronic pain — and found she could work more efficiently and effectively outside state and party constraints.


JEFF GILBERT / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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