There are lessons to be learned from Boris Johnson's encounter with an 'angry parent'

Perhaps the biggest story on social media yesterday was the encounter between an angry parent and the Prime Minister at Whipps Cross Hospital. The parent was apparently the father of a child who had not been treated well in the hospital Mr. Johnson was visiting, which the father blamed on cuts and poor organisation.

There is nothing the media love more than an ordinary member of the public having a go at a leading politician, ideally the Prime Minister, about an important issue of the day. Think of Diana Gould, an English schoolteacher, attacking Mrs Thatcher on Nationwide in 1983 over the sinking of the Belgrano. Or Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy in 2010, when he had to grovel to her for calling her “some bigoted woman”. His career never recovered. The story of the angry father looked like more of the same, and this was how it was initially reported by the TV news.

Then, Guido Fawkes revealed that this ordinary parent wasn’t actually so ordinary. He was apparently a long-time Labour activist who had worked for Emily Thornberry for two-and-a-half years. Cue screeching brakes and media cars going into reverse. Their dream story had gone sour. Laura Kuenssberg reported the new version and, for her pains, received a tsunami of abuse from the Left for spoiling their story. Who cares whether he was a Labour activist or not? They said. He was still an ordinary parent telling the truth about government cuts and the destruction of the NHS.

The next day the herd had moved on. But before we follow them to the next big story (John Major testifying before the Supreme Court, presumably), are there any lessons to be learnt from all this?

Yes. First, the conspiracy theorists among you may wonder what are the odds of a Labour activist who had worked for some time for a member of the Shadow Cabinet just coming across the Prime Minister and assorted TV crews in the very hospital where his child was being treated? Just a coincidence? Really?

After all, this isn’t the first time this has happened recently. In June a Labour activist, who had once stood as a councillor for the party, appeared – apparently as an ordinary member of the public – on a BBC hustings programme during the Conservative leadership campaign in what the Daily Express called a ‘”biased” debacle’. For this to happen once is curious. Twice in three months looks like more than a coincidence.

Second, it is worth noting that this has happened so soon after the government announced huge rises in funding for the NHS, schools and the police. For years Labour has attacked successive Conservative Prime Ministers for cuts, especially in the NHS. The new funding had apparently blocked that line of attack. Now we have a new strategy. Don’t bother with statistics in debates in Parliament. Bypass all that and just create media opportunities where apparently ordinary parents shout at the Prime Minister about the destruction of the NHS. Is the NHS facing destruction? Shall we look at the statistics ? No. Forget all that old-fashioned stuff and just go back to the old message but in a more visceral way. What happened yesterday was like a Party Political Broadcast but better because it all came (apparently) from an ordinary parent.

This is a new kind of politics and it’s very effective. The media love it. You don’t have to bother with statistics that can be refuted. All you have to do is find out where the PM or a cabinet member is going to be (and I wonder how they found this out?) and find a parent who is willing to confront the PM. Find or perhaps even place? No one has asked how this particular Labour activist just happened to be there.

Finally, why was it Guido Fawkes and not the BBC Sky or Channel 4 News who broke the Labour activist story? Could it be because the mainstream media loved the story and were both too lazy and too blinkered to check whether it might be too good to be true? Often in news when something is too good to be true it’s because it is. Remember Gordon Brown and the “bigoted” woman? No one stopped to ask why the Sky sound person had not removed the microphone from the PM after his interview. In twenty years in TV I have never known this to happen. Not once. Was this a fishing expedition, effectively bugging the PM in the hope of recording something indiscreet? Did this happen on any other occasions to Brown or to any other politician?

With Milne and Cummings in charge don’t be surprised if this turns out to be the ugliest election campaign in years, full of “coincidences” and full of “ordinary people” who just happened to be there. And don’t be surprised if the mainstream media play very innocent and are surprisingly slow on the uptake.