Politicians must accept scrutiny because it actually helps them

Accountability or cancellation? Politicians must stop dismissing our desire for detail and information.

Don’t forget about my brand new podcast. This week, we went exceptionally viral.

It’s called Whitehall Sources.

This article was first published in The Stornoway Gazette.

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Often, the word “accountability” has appeared on this page. I’m sure it will happen regularly. In an interview with my Times Radio colleague, Mariella Frostrup, last week, Graham Norton of The Graham Norton Show said: “You read a lot of articles in papers by people complaining about cancel culture and you think, ‘In what world are you cancelled?’ I’m reading your article in a newspaper, or you’re doing interviews about how terrible it is to be cancelled. I think the word is the wrong word. I think the word should be ‘accountability’.” 

He goes on to, very eloquently, suggest why he shouldn’t be involved in conversations that often provoke controversy and about which he is not an expert. He points instead to including in such conversations those who are living the experience in question. He says celebrities should not have their voices amplified above those who are living something for real. Of course, he was then hounded off Twitter and has, seemingly, deleted his account.

My brain has combined his focus on “accountability” with the current political crisis in which the Conservative government, and party, find themselves. By default, the entire country has been pulled into the Tory doom-loop. Liz Truss has not been cancelled - but such is the ferocity of the accountability she is experiencing, almost the entirety of her “mini-budget” has been set on fire and is no more. 

Strikingly, armed forces minister James Heappey told Times Radio on Tuesday morning that, when the original mini-budget was revealed to cabinet, not a single person thought there would be any problems as a result of it or raised any concerns. This is an astonishing revelation about the lack of challenge to the prime minister’s plans which, as we know, have a real, and lasting, impact. For example: this week’s Eorpa programme on BBC Alba, reports that fuel poverty in the Western Isles will reach 80% of households this winter. 

Throughout the Conservative leadership election, journalists across the nation sought clarity, as they are prone to do. We asked questions of representatives of both candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, and we tried to understand what they were proposing, how their plans would work and what the impact of them would actually be. We were attempting to hold them accountable for their plans for you.

James Cleverly, a cabinet office minister who, himself, dropped out of the previous leadership contest in 2019, became a supporter of Liz Truss this summer. He went on the merry-go-round of cabinet appointments in the hazy summer fuzz of Boris Johnson’s demise. At the time I interviewed him on August 10th, he was the Education Secretary, a position in which he served from July to September. He is now the Foreign Secretary. It’s difficult to keep up. 

I asked Mr Cleverly if Liz Truss’s comment that: "we should be on the side of people who do the right thing...who are contributing to the economy" excludes poor pensioners, children and disabled in low income houses from being on their side. These people, in a traditional sense, might not be “contributing” to the economy through income tax, for example. Came his reply: it is a "nonsense question.”

Calum Macdonald @CalumAM

Asked Education Sec James Cleverly if Liz Truss: "we should be on the side of people who do the right thing...who are contributing to the economy" excludes poor pensioners, children & disabled in low income houses from her being on their side. Him: it is a "nonsense question"

I highlight this only to demonstrate something that has irked me since it has been all but proven that Rishi Sunak was right and Liz Truss was wrong about the implementation of economic policies at this moment, in the current situation. All through the leadership election campaign, we sought clarity and detail and, more often than not, we were left gasping for information. In honesty, interviewing candidates each day became a thankless task as none came forward with information on spending plans, funding, what tax cuts would mean or where money would come from. They either did not know, did not care or did not understand. Often, as highlighted with Mr Cleverly, concerns raised by our listeners were dismissed as “nonsense”.

This lack of detail in campaigning has left us in the situation of today. An economic meltdown and politically embarrassing and damaging U-turns by a Prime Minister who is now trying to outlast a lettuce. The Daily Star has a livestream to see if a lettuce - which is not refrigerated - will remain in more steadfast condition than the actual Prime Minister. Make that make sense.

All through the Conservative leadership campaign, journalists - me included - pressed and pressed for information and detail and specifics on plans. Regularly, we were told to wait until the conclusion of the leadership contest and more information would be given. Well, wait we did. 

Perhaps if politicians had not been so dismissive of our desire for detail and, instead, had inherited some of our inquisitive concern - or at least, used it to interrogate the plans of those to whom they were offering support - they would not find themselves lost at sea now. When they do not dig for detail, they get found out. And dramatically. 

Liz Truss’s premiership is all but over. James Heappey revealed that not a single cabinet member had the wherewithal to interrogate the mini-budget plans which went on to cause massive-economic harm. For weeks and months of a leadership campaign, members of the public - members of the Conservative party - were left in an information drought. Detail matters. Information matters. Depth of knowledge matters. Otherwise, accountability very quickly becomes cancellation - of policy, and Prime Ministerial careers.