PM’s spokesman says…

“I’m scouring back copies of the FT to see where Peston’s next scoop is coming from.”

Another day and another poacher turning game-keeper. Guido hears that Simon McGee of the Sunday Times is off to spin for the Department of Transport as their Head of News. This is the latest in a series of hack-to-government transfers that has included Gabriel Milland, formerly of the Express, going to Education and the Times’ Sam Lister going to Health. It also emerges today that Michael Tait, who was the sympathetic Political Editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, has gone to spin for Ruth Davidson, the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives. And which other Political Editor, very friendly with Craig Oliver, is desperate for a senior Head of Comms job at pretty much any big department?

The Mail’s deputy political editor Tim Shipman is the new Chairman of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

He will no doubt install a little more fun in the normally stuffy organisation, while embodying its amour-propre outlook.

His Lobby colleagues’ spoof Twitter account for him is a must follow.

Drinks all round.

Good news for the BBC’s Paul Lambert following the ridiculous decision by the Serjeant at Arms to ban him after he filmed her embarrassing failure to prevent the breach of security during the testimony of the Murdochs. Gobby’s pass has been restored after Louise Mensch raised a point of order regarding the banning of the BBC’s Gobby and a Twitter campaign to #SaveGobby took off. Why on earth was he banned in the first place? This is a public building, paid for at great expense by the public. You would have thought after the battle for opening up MPs’ expenses they would have learnt. Parliamentarians are our servants, they work for us and the Serjent at Arms would do well to remember who is the boss…

Paul Waugh has the full story, but it seems the BBC’s roving fixer Paul Lambert, affectionately named Gobby for his polite and considerate questioning style, has had his parliamentary pass removed after he chased the Murdoch pie tosser through the estate, filming him in cuffs.

As if the Commons authorities and security didn’t humiliate themselves enough in front of the world’s media, now they are trying to pass the buck. Instead of kicking out hacks for broadcasting their embarrassing failings, perhaps the men in tights should be pointing fingers at their own ranks. Maybe they didn’t want Gobby shouting “Are you going to resign Serjeant at Arms…?” 

Imagine a secretive organisation whose members have privileged access to Downing Street. Imagine that the members of this organisation receive information covertly. Imagine that the rules of this organisation force the members to withhold information from outsiders if the Prime Minister tells them so to do. Then consider that the members of this closed, opaque, secretive organisation are supposed to hold politicians to account on behalf of the public. After 208 years it is time to end the Lobby system.

The gentlemen of the Lobby drink in subsidised bars, from which the public are excluded, with the politicians they are supposed to hold to account on behalf of that same public. Cowardice and cronyism runs right through the Lobby because they are fearful of being taken off the teat of pre-packaged stories served to them.  That is not journalism, that is copy-taking, this blog was established in part because Guido believes the Lobby system fails the public. The Fourth Estate may not have a formal constitutional role, but the role is real. The role is not to produce “client journalism”.

Peter Oborne in his brilliant Triumph of the Political Class characterises the Lobby system as having produced a tame “client media”. He is absolutely right, the Lobby is far too cosily embedded in the politico-media system, far too close to their subjects, with the likes of Nick Robinson flashing his taxpayer-financed credit card to pour the better vintages down the throats of ministers who have their lunch on the BBC telly-taxpayers. The same ministers who had their expensed groceries sent to their mortgage subsidised home at the taxpayers’ expense. The system stinks, those who are supposed to be watching over politicians – journalists – and the politicians themselves, are the only ones who benefit from the system staying the same.

Two years ago the then PMOS, Simon Lewis, and the then chairman of the Lobby, Jean Eaglesham, announced that the system of Downing Street Lobby briefings was to be reviewed “in light of the changes in the reporting of the work of government in an increasingly fast-moving and on-line media world”. A working group of six lobby hacks and five government spin doctors was to come up with recommendations to be implemented last year. No one from the fast-moving online media world was on the working group. Did anything change? No.

Tom Watson has just called for an end to the Lobby system and off the record briefings. Cameron has said he supports all contacts between politicians and newspaper executives being a matter of public record. More transparency is clearly a good thing. That transparency should be applied to the Lobby system…

See also: In 2007 Guido filmed this polemic against the Lobby system for Newsnight:

Nick Clegg just told the Press Gallery lunch:

“Whatever people say about Chris Huhne, I don’t know any politician better at getting his points across.”

It’s almost as if he’s enjoying his old foe suffering…

Wondering why @SamCoatesTimes just stormed out of Commons press gallery.—
James Kirkup (@jameskirkup) March 07, 2011

Coates outed the “senior government source” that Kirkup was less than subtly dissing on his blog earlier. Calm down dears…

The gentlemen of the Lobby are as thin-skinned and status conscious as a gaggle of gay hairdressers on a night out, so Craig Oliver will need to up his game. The Lobby already have their noses a little out of joint because Downing Street hired a bloke off the telly, BBC TV at that, rather than one of their own. Downing Street implicitly signalling to the ink-stained old hands of the Lobby that telly is more important than they are in the great scheme of things.

When Craig visited the press gallery this week to introduce himself (sans bumbag) there was the usual faux bonhomie on both sides. The inkies and the TV luvvie meet and greet was respectful if not warm. Asked for his mobile number Craig put one political editor in their place thus “you can get me through the switchboard”.

Lord Ashcroft’s “Dirty Politics, Dirty Times” doesn’t hold back on Red Ed’s newly appointed Murdoch fixer. If we turn to page 216 we find a nice anecdote about Tom Baldwin’s cocaine habit:

“…which regrettably seems to have become more serious in recent years. Indeed, during the Conservative Party conference in October 2001, he put Peter Stothard’s suite at the Imperial Hotel to ‘good’ use when his editor was unable to make it to the conference as planned. In the company of two journalist colleagues – Giles Coren and Alice Miles – Baldwin snorted lines of cocaine from the glass coffee table in Stothard’s suite. I certainly have no evidence that his colleagues took the drug, but I am told that Baldwin’s appetite for it was voracious and also that at least one colleague reprimanded him for his stupidity, saying: ‘What the hell do you think you are doing, Tom?’ Such is Baldwin’s craving for the drug that he had taken the not inconsiderable risk of smuggling cocaine through the hotel’s high-level security in order to feed his habit.”

Hacks sniffing coke at Tory conference? Whatever next…