The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn explained candidly to the listeners at the very end of The Today Programme this morning the means by which ministers leak information to lobby journalists.

“You don’t ring up a minister and ask ‘Will you leak this to me?’ You say to him, ‘look, if I was to write … and I think that this happened, would I look particularly silly?’ And then the minister says to you ‘I don’t think you look particularly silly Tom at the best of times.'”

That’s how the Lobby thinks they stop themselves looking silly…

See also: How lobby journalists get their stories