Guido’s old enough to remember when half the Lobby kicked up a stink over Suella Braverman’s trip to Rwanda in March after certain outlets were “barred” from accompanying her. The Guardian moaned about an “unusual level of control imposed on media coverage“, while the Mirror insisted Braverman had “come under fire for excluding papers critical of the Government”. The same thing happened the previous year with Priti Patel.

The Lobby cartel has, in the past, taken a strong line against selective access – even organising a walkout when Lee Cain tried it. Now it turns out only two papers were invited to join Rachel Reeves on her expensive quest to the US this week: The Sun and the FT. Rivals at Bloomberg and Politico were not given the same embedded status despite their readers’ keen interest in the politics of the would-be Chancellor. No one else got a look-in on Rachel’s champagne-fuelled trip to Wall Street. Where is the outrage this time? The Lobby seems remarkably quiet about the whole thing. Perhaps they’re not interested in covering the (likely) future Chancellor’s economic policies. Or maybe they’d rather not lose important access ahead of an incoming Labour government. Wouldn’t want to get in Matthew Doyle’s bad books too early…

Guido’s also pleased to see Rachel’s explanation for flying Business Class, despite previously trying to hide it and criticising out-of-touch Tories. She claims to The Sun’s Ryan Sabey:

“To operate on the level I want to operate at I think it was appropriate to ask a donor to fund this trip so we can do it in a way that we need to and want to.”

She needed to be in Business Class just to do her job properly, apparently. Labour donors should take note: an effective Chancellor won’t come cheap. Guido asked what seat Sabey himself was allocated, and it turns out he was in row 32 – economy class. Hopefully he was still able to operate on the level Rupert Murdoch expects…