Since Boris Johnson became prime minister, his past as a journalist has largely been held against him. Almost the only positive appraisal of his first career came – well, it would, wouldn’t it? – from his former employer, which lauded him as “the first Telegraph journalist since Winston Churchill to lead the country”.
Even erstwhile colleagues have taken a dim view of someone who essentially changed sides, from the reporter to the reported-on. And journalism, after all, comes with its own baggage: in successive league tables of public trust, journalists have long languished at the bottom, along with estate agents and politicians. Johnson ticks two of those boxes.
Now I am not going to go into the vexed question of whether journalism is a trade or a profession or a craft. Nor am I going to argue the merits or otherwise, of Johnson’s particularly florid brand of journalism – from straight bananas in Brussels to burqas in Britain. But I am going to argue that journalism can be a good, even excellent, preparation for a prime minister, especially in this day and age, and that some of the upsides are already apparent. How so?
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Journalists have to be able to write and speak in a way that non-specialists and the general public can understand. Many sectors these days have developed their own language, which is incomprehensible to those outside their immediate circle of civil servants, lawyers, academics or local government. Journalists spend quite a lot of their time trying to “translate” this barely penetrable jargon into “human”. Obfuscation may be a mark of exclusivity in some circles, but for journalists, as for anyone exercising political leadership, it should be anathema. Clarity and plain-speaking are essential to what we do.
You can say what you like about Donald Trump – a Johnson fan, as we know – but his bluff assertions and his tweeting have transformed political communication. No one can say that they do not understand what Trump says. They may disagree with him – vehemently; he may be wrong; he may sometimes retreat from what he has just said. But he communicates in a way that many national leaders can only envy and a great many have begun to imitate. As mayor of London and in the days since he has been at No 10, Johnson has been nothing if not a communicator.
Journalists must also be able to grasp the essentials of complicated subjects quickly, while being adept at detecting an unduly positive or negative gloss – someone, perish the thought, trying to “spin” them. Prime ministers must do the same. Some of them, we are told, stay up into the early hours reading the contents of their red boxes. Some are better at delegating, or informed skimming, than others.
But, as every reporter will know, there is no substitute for being in a position to make a quick and accurate assessment yourself. Burying crucial documents at the bottom of the pile or placing the most sensitive discussion topic at the tail-end of the agenda are well-tried bureaucratic subterfuges. They are well-known to journalists. They will be well known to Johnson, too.
Asking awkward questions is something else that journalists are expected to do, especially of established authority. You may think that a prime minister, who is, after all, top dog, would not need such a skill. If you think that, you have never watched Yes, Prime Minister. There is also a knack to asking questions in a way that is more likely to elicit an actual answer than equivocation. An element of guile might not come amiss, too. Watch someone like the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg at a news conference, and you will see how that works.
Journalists are also likely to have been exposed to a wide variety of experience. Even if they have not actually worked in a call centre or a school or a hospital themselves, even if they have never been victim of a crime or had to make a life or death decision, they may well have reported on, or talked to people, who have. This is no substitute for firsthand experience, but it makes them relatively comfortable in many different situations and outside their immediate circle – unlike many professionals who live and work in their own compartments.
Now you may say that the difference between, say, Theresa May and Gordon Brown, on the one hand, and Johnson and Tony Blair on the other (just for instance), as politicians distinctly nervous of the public compared with those who seem as at ease with the office cleaner as the boss, can be put down, in part, to their public school polish. And there is doubtless truth in that. But for those who have not enjoyed the privilege of schooling at Eton or Fettes, reporting on other people’s lives is not a bad preparation for developing the popular touch that has always been a part of politics.
Many other attributes go to making a good reporter, but an observer’s eye is crucial, as is the ability to see the wood through the trees, and respond fast. For all the recent interest in “long-form” and “slow” journalism, speed of response often remains of the essence – as indeed it must be for national leaders. Like it or not, in this age of instant and social media, there is a race to “be there” and to seize the “narrative”. Contrast Johnson’s helicopter trip to the Whaley Bridge dam with May’s dilly-dallying on the way to Grenfell Tower. A journalist has to be on the scene and understand how the incident, or whatever, will be more broadly perceived. So, many times over, does the national leader.
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Johnson knows that full well. His long-standing interest in Winston Churchill is not just as a war leader, statesman and, oh so shamelessly, a role model, but as a journalist. He has described Churchill as a “superb reporter”, saying that it was Churchill’s observations as a journalist that helped him understand the implications of Hitler and Nazism as a politician. In other words, real-life reporting can pay dividends in terms of better-informed political decisions later on – just as MPs who have experienced combat tend to be less hawkish than their colleagues in matters of peace and war.
Let me repeat: I am not passing any judgment about Johnson’s journalism. Strong opinions forcefully expressed in print or on the airwaves are one thing; uncorrected mistakes, inaccuracy, fabricating quotations, etc, are quite another. Nor am I saying that journalism is a better preparation for a prime minister than, say, being a research chemist (Margaret Thatcher), a local councillor (John Major), a barrister (Tony Blair), or a corporate PR executive (David Cameron) – either now, or ever. Remember, Brown was briefly a journalist, too.
What I am saying is that journalists tend to have, or to acquire, certain skills that can serve a political leader well, especially at a time when presentation matters. I would also say that, for better or worse, Johnson is already showing how. The corollary of this argument might be – in a happy postscript for jobbing journalists everywhere – that you, too, could be prime minister one day!