The National:

THIS is how the Westminster political bubble operates. This is not new.

But every once in a while there’s tangible evidence that something isn’t quite right in the system that you can point to and say: Told you so.

Last night four of the country’s most senior journalists posted nearly identical tweets from an unnamed UK Government source slagging off Keir Starmer.

Now listen folks – we’re a pro-independence paper. We’re not too concerned about Tories getting stuck into the Labour leader. But let us explain the issue here.

Within a half an hour window, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, former Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn and his successor Harry Cole all tweeted the same quote from a “senior govt source”.

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The quote itself was nothing special. The source said: ““Keir Starmer is a shameless opportunist playing political games in the middle of a global pandemic. He says he wants a national lockdown but he’s refusing to back targeted restrictions in areas that need them most.”

But in the Westminster bubble journalists jump to put out these highly politicised messages without attributing them to anyone.

At Ross McCafferty eloquently put it: “Cummings' group texts working then.”

It happens all the time. In the immediate aftermath of the Dominic Cummings lockdown scandal, Kuenssberg was publicly tweeting the Mirror journalist who broke the story to inform her an unnamed UK Government source believed they had their details wrong.

There’s never anyone named so nobody can ever be held accountable – if the information is wrong it doesn’t matter because no individual can be criticised.

The unchecked repetition of unnamed senior Tories makes these reporters more like party press officers by the day.

The Conservatives dominate the media and their agenda always comes out on top – and the UK’s most senior journalists seem only too happy to keep it that way.