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HOW do you actually “unannounce” a policy?
That was my question to a colleague yesterday while we were having a passing conversation about Labour’s nine millionth (ed – check) U-turn.
How do you actually, physically do it, I asked. You obviously can’t call a press conference, that would be farcical.
Haven’t you seen their message about it, he asked. I had not. Obligingly, he sent me on a WhatsApp from Labour’s communications people, inviting a raft of journalists to a “huddle” somewhere in the bowels of the Palace of Westminster.
Thus began a tiresome process of trying to actually get in the room with Keir Starmer (below) and Rachel Reeves to hear them mercy kill the “albatross” £28 billion green spending pledge.
I sent a message to the comms person, introducing myself and asking could I get a space in the huddle.
More than an hour later, he replied: “Hi Hamish, I'm afraid we're at capacity today. Sorry.”
You wouldn’t be much of a journalist if there was something important going on and you took the piddling matter of a) not being invited and b) being specifically told you couldn’t go as a reason to miss it.
READ MORE: Top ranking Labour activist: 'I don't believe a word Keir Starmer says'
So I turned to other colleagues for help. Shamelessly, I texted a group chat of other younger lobby hacks asking if any better-connected people knew where it was happening.
This was met with many shrugs and some grumbling from other journalists at smaller outlets about political parties playing favourites and only keeping the big beasts in the loop.
But one came through, saying that she could no longer make it and that there was therefore a space free.
“Good news,” I texted the beleaguered Labour spinner. “My colleague has said she can't go to the huddle today so I can fill her place.”
This was met with stony silence. I called around 40 minutes later to ask for confirmation of where I could find the huddle, which by this point I had come to think of as my own personal Mordor.
He sounded hesitant on the phone. “Er, ok. It’s in the old shadow cabinet office, behind the Speaker’s chair.”
These are as precise directions as anyone in Westminster can give you really. One must rely on a small army of security guards to direct you around when lost.
I set off with just 10 minutes to spare. A kindly guard told me where to find the office and sunnily suggested that when I reached the end of the corridor “someone should help you find it from there”.
I reached the end of the corridor. A stony faced Labour aide greeted me, looking slightly puzzled. I could hear a gaggle of hacks in an adjacent room.
I introduced myself and said I was looking for the huddle with Starmer and Reeves, trying my best to sound like I had not earlier been implicitly then expressly told they didn’t really want me there.
READ MORE: Keir Starmer 'looks like empty vessel' after £28 billion U-turn, Labour aide says
“Your name isn’t on the list.”
“Oh, well [name redacted] said it would be fine and to come here. A colleague pulled out and so a space became available.”
Her eyes rolled with enough force to launch a jet plane, but the combination of saying the right name and knowing the location seemed to be enough for her so she let me in.
Finally, I had arrived in Mordor.
It was an unedifying spectacle. Starmer and Reeves (above) insisted for 40 minutes that flip-flopping was no bad thing and that spending wads of cash on potentially planet-saving green stuff was just no longer viable. Cos fiscal rules…
READ MORE: Keir Starmer's £4.7 billion green pledge 'matches what Scotland spends alone'
This might seem like a petty gripe about not being invited to the party all the cool kids are going to. But there is a serious point here. In the days of devolution and shrinking newspaper budgets, there are fewer and fewer journalists for Scottish papers present in Westminster.
And this U-turn on energy is perhaps the one volte-face with the most relevance to Scotland – given our famed renewables sector and the small matter of being the bit of the UK where most of the oil and gas actually is.
I know at least one other Scottish journalist was not invited, from a paper far less hostile to Labour than us. Scotland needs answers about a key area of energy policy from the party virtually certain to form the next government.
But it still begs the question: Why didn’t Keir Starmer want a pesky National journalist there?
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