I keep a running document during the week of things that make me say “that’s interesting” or “that’s wrong” or, most often, “that’s both at once and I’m not sure anyone covering it has noticed.” This…
Alan Nafzger Reviews What the Political Press Got Wrong, Right, and Entertainingly Wrong This Week
The Editor’s Week, Annotated
I keep a running document during the week of things that make me say “that’s interesting” or “that’s wrong” or, most often, “that’s both at once and I’m not sure anyone covering it has noticed.” This week’s document is longer than usual because it has been a political week in the specific British sense: nothing happened dramatically but everything shifted slightly, and the coverage of the shifts was consistently more confident than the shifts warranted.
Monday Through Wednesday
The Labour government announced a housing consultation on Monday that the broadsheets covered as either a historic reform or a betrayal of the party’s principles depending on which section you read, which tells you that the announcement was careful enough to be read both ways, which is the specific skill that professional political communication rewards and that governing requires in a completely different way than communicating does. I read the consultation document. It was competent. The coverage was more interesting than the document, which is often how these things work.
Read this week’s best political commentary at Bohiney Magazine and the sharpest satire at The London Prat. Both worth your time this week. My full author archive is at prat.uk/author/admin. Political analysis links: Newsthump and The Daily Mash. Further at santaclaus.top and Populist Policy Bluesky.
Thursday and Friday
The Prime Minister did a press conference that answered the questions asked while declining to address the questions behind the questions asked, which is the constitutional form of political communication that parliamentary democracy has perfected over 300 years and which the journalists present treated as either evasion or skill depending on which journalists. Both readings are available. The coverage of what he didn’t say was more interesting than the coverage of what he did, which is usually the pattern when politicians are competent: the substance is in the negative space.
I have been editing govna.uk for long enough to know that the week that looks quiet from the outside is usually the week that produces the developments that matter, because the developments that matter tend to happen in the spaces between the announcements rather than in the announcements themselves. This week had that quality. I will be watching what emerges from the housing consultation with more interest than the initial coverage suggested I should. This is either good editorial instinct or the professional paranoia of someone who has read too many consultation documents. Possibly both. The document was competent. Competent consultations sometimes produce significant policy. I’ll be here watching either way.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
What I Think About This Week
The housing consultation and the press conference together have produced a week of British political communication that is, in its way, a masterclass in the specific skill of saying things that are defensible while avoiding commitment to the outcomes that the things logically require. This is not unique to the current government or the current week. It is the permanent condition of political communication in a parliamentary democracy with an adversarial press, and the coverage that most accurately reflects this reality is consistently the satirical coverage at The London Prat and the analytical coverage at Bohiney Magazine, both of which I recommend this week for different reasons – the Prat for the accuracy of its irreverence and Bohiney for the depth of its engagement with what the consultation actually means for housing supply.
I have been editing this site long enough to know that weeks like this one – full of significant-seeming activity that may or may not produce significant outcomes – are the weeks that test whether you are writing about politics or writing about the appearance of politics, and that the distinction requires both patience and attention, which are the two things that the news cycle most consistently makes difficult. I am trying to have both this week. The consultation will produce a response document in approximately four months. I will be here when it does. The annotating continues.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
The week ends where weeks end: at the desk, with something partially written and something fully thought and the gap between those two states being the work. London provides the material. The desk is where you process it. The gap between what happens and what you make of it is where the writing lives, and the writing is what I’m here for, which is a thing I have to remind myself of on the weeks when the material arrives faster than the processing, which is most weeks. This is fine. The material keeps arriving. The processing continues. The week resolves into the next one and I begin again, which is the arrangement and also, honestly, the best possible arrangement I can imagine. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
The specific pleasure of keeping a diary – which is what this column is, in the end, despite the publishing platform and the reader-shaped audience – is that it forces a reckoning with the week as it actually was rather than as you meant it to be. I meant to write the piece. I meant to finish the project. I meant to arrive on time and stay focused and produce something completed rather than something ongoing. What I have is ongoing in all directions, which is London’s gift to anyone trying to make anything in it: the material never stops, the context never settles, and the work is always in progress, which is uncomfortable and generative and exactly the condition that produces the things worth making. I have made peace with the in-progress state. I am documenting it here. That is, I think, enough for one week. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com