Should the daily Downing Street press conference become permanent?

For anyone who doubted that the relationship between the Government and the media is a volatile one, Thursday’s press conference at Downing Street came as a salutary reminder. After his toughest week since emerging from intensive care, Boris Johnson bounced back with a commanding performance that moved the news agenda on and left journalists floundering. The balance of power, which had seemed to be tipping against the politicians and in favour of the media, has now been restored.

The mistake that even highly experienced political correspondents such as Laura Kuenssberg repeatedly make is to forget that what the Prime Minister says is (very often) news. By asking prepared questions, rather than reacting quickly to his announcements, they risk being left behind by events. After Boris Johnson told the country that they would be allowed to see their families and friends, almost all the media asked questions about Dominic Cummings. Instead of scrutinising the detail of a crucial and imminent relaxation of the lockdown, they tried to move the conversation back to familiar ground, impressing their peers rather than serving the public. Faced with the two most senior scientific advisers, with urgent and important information to impart, journalists tried to drag them into a political discussion. Not one asked a question about the Sage documents released by the Government which they had been demanding a few days earlier.

None of these tactics worked. Journalists forgot that the Prime Minister doesn’t have to answer questions on matters that he (and the police) had already declared closed. For a politician of Johnson’s calibre, it was child’s play to knock such deliveries for six. As for the boffins: given the opportunity, both Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty protested that the last thing they wanted was to be drawn into politics. Vallance, indeed, made it clear that scientific advisers offer advice, but do not make policy. Neither gave the impression that they had been gagged or reluctant to appear.

Boris Johnson has learnt how to make the coronavirus press conference work for him and the Government. But the PM, like other ministers, is living dangerously. As a journalist himself, he knows that if the press are alert and capable of coming up with a killer question in a live online broadcast, one false step by him could be fatal. In the battle of wits that takes place at every conference, presence of mind and the art of improvisation are decisive.

So what explains the shifting dynamics of these daily duels at Downing Street? The person or people who give a press conference always has the whip hand, provided they can think on their feet and remember that they don’t have to answer any particular question. If they do, they then needed to explain precisely what they mean, or risk unintended consequences.

Perhaps the most famous and consequential press conference in history was the one that brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989. Günter Schabowski, the East German spokesman, first answered a question that he should have ignored and then failed to answer a follow-up question (mine, as it happens) in a way that might have prevented events at the Wall spiralling out of control. The watching public drew their own conclusions. As a result of one man’s mishandling of a press conference, the Cold War ended that night.

Poor Schabowski had never given a live news conference in front of Western journalists before. It is a skill — a rare one that takes time to acquire. American presidents have been giving press conferences at the White House ever since Woodrow Wilson initiated the practice in 1913. Dwight Eisenhower let them be televised, but recorded. It suited Jack Kennedy to give them live; his successors have all followed suit, with the attendant risks. After Watergate, the press corps became less deferential and more adversarial. Donald Trump recast these occasions in his own divisive image; some of his conferences resemble the theatre of the absurd, but they still help voters to make up their minds.

Here in Britain, a less combative tradition emerged during the last century: accredited parliamentary journalists (“the lobby”) are “briefed” — not by the Prime Minister, but by an official, and not in public, but behind closed doors. To be “briefed” means literally to be given one’s brief, i.e. instructions — the very opposite of the modern conception of a journalist’s role. It is revealing that lobby journalists still refer to the coronavirus press conferences as “briefings”. They are nothing of the sort, if only because they are televised live. The lobby no longer has a monopoly, either: local journalists and even members of the public have latterly been invited to ask questions too.

It is possible, even probable, that the Downing Street press conference, like many temporary expedients, will become permanent. If it does, this will not be the first political tradition that we have borrowed from America. That is in part because British politics has become more presidential. The equivalent British institution is parliamentary: Prime Minister’s Questions. But that is restricted to MPs; the public has tired of their partisan and esoteric rituals. Regular press conferences by the Prime Minister or other senior ministers could provide more direct accountability. Indeed, Americans see their White House conferences as an informal adjunct to the checks and balances of the US Constitution, a visible embodiment of the freedom of the press. Here, with our unwritten constitution, the Downing Street press conference could quickly become an institution. Perhaps, indeed, it already has.