in the thread: british political journalists who are worth reading

stephen bush
peter oborne

bush is at the new statesman which would be unredeemable if it weren't for him, one of his strengths i think is that he's quite young
oborne's an unrepentant old-school tory but very good indeed on the badness of blair and the shallow shitshow that was cameron, plus resigned from the telegraph in honourable circs

there must be others (but a thread listing those not worth reading wd get unwieldy p quickly)

Can't really agree with Peter Oborne from what I've seen. HIs resignation was his high-point, but his writing and analysis was pretty feeble and old fogey-ish when I last followed him with any regularity.

I find Andrew Rawnsley worth reading.

Does William/Will Davies count or isn't he frequent enough? i still think his Home Office Rules essay is one of the best things written on Brexit and May.

on rawnsley there we part company entirely :)

(oborne is certainlv fogeyish)

Rawnsley is at his best the closer to the inside he is - you don't read him for his opinions but for what he's able to wring out of his contacts book. He's obviously a NuLab true believer but it's also clear that his level of access isn't what it was so he's increasingly just shaking his fist from the sidelines, especially where Labour politics is concerned.

local political journalism often seems to have a better signal to noise ratio than national, imo? Jennifer Williams of the Manchester Evening News writes some useful stuff

no others have yet popped into my mind: of the five so far mentioned, two were instantly challenged, one (will davies) i know nothing of, and one is from local news for an area i don't live in

one so far unchallenged seems a poor strikerate for a profession! and while i think SB is p good, i don't think he's THAT good :|

obviously that shd be strikerate two from five, not one from five: my not knowing will davies isn't a reflection on him

A good political journo should have a deep contact book, but still be able to do the basics of beat reporting and policy analysis - I can't think of anyone who does all three. Stephen Bush does okay clickbait Westminster gossip/personality politics reporting, which is fine for when you're bored in the office before lunch, but most of his analysis seems secondhand.

In general I find the NS's politics a bit inscrutable these days, although that might be because it has an unusually poor bank of writers at the moment.

Some of the columnists and bloggers at The Economist are pretty good right now, but that's more Europe than UK.

As an aside, can anyone recommend a good book about the Thatcher era? I tried reading Andy Beckett's Miracle book, which was recommended elsewhere on ILX, but find him a bit plodding.

Owen Jones? I still find him worth reading.

Aditya Chakrabortty and Dawn Foster are very good at what they do - which is largely looking at the effects of policy rather than Westminster politics itself.

I don't hold it against Chakrabortty that he works for The Groan, he is definitely a cut above what passes for a journalist there these days.

I was going to say Chakrabortty but almost all his stuff falls under "comment". but yes.

Some good graun clowning on twitter this morning

https://twitter.com/said_mitch/status/663343550822748160

https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/9/25/1380090855803/John-Harris-at-Labour-con-012.jpg

Think Chuck's a bit unfair to Bush -- who it seems to me often does smart and readable policy analysis (I don't really care that it's second-hand). He's clearheaded on arcana -- like the inner workings of labour party voting systems -- an extremely useful from that perspective. (Contrast David Allen Green, who is also clearheaded on legal arcana, but a pinhead when it comes to the consequent politics.)

I think by its nature "political journalist" always falls between comment and leg-work -- and that journalists are often better for being clear and open about their political leaning. I started to write that the "view from nowhere" that dogs US polltical punditry is less of an issue over here -- but in fact I think a particular kind of complacent centrism does actually aspire to this (and kid itself that it IS this). Remembering for example Peter Kellner's war on 80s labour, and thrilled excitement at the emergence of the SDP (Kellner was a pollster at the New Statesman, who went on to found YouGov): the tools of objectivity were very obviously skewed towards a particular kind of emerging consensus politics, which is precisely what Tony Blair spotted and used so effectively. Difference is -- in contrast to the US -- that this never really bedded in over here (Blair's untroubled imperial phase lasts what, five years if that?) and is now of course in ruins. Many of the Guardian's columnists seem not to have spotted this yet.

xp He's literally wearing a lanyard

i don't think will davies fits here tbh. too academic, not embedded enough in the westminster to and fro, so strike him from the list. the specific brexit/may article here for ref tho:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n21/william-davies/home-office-rules

agree with matt dc on rawnsley. you want to read him when he does insidery stuff. indifferent/antagonistic to his opinion.

Also possibly unfair but this sort of prestidigitating-as-reporting thing is annoying (obvs it won't stop, nor is it a specifically british thing)

http://i.imgur.com/ZhgUdfo.png

I forgot James Meek in the LRB, if that counts, as someone who does both comment and leg-work (he doesn't write very often though)

Chakrabortty and Foster are excellent but yeah they report the effects of policy.

Ellie Mae O'Hagan is really good on Westminster politics and has avoided the trap Owen Jones has fallen into wrt Corbyn.

novara media dot com I live 4 this.

novara's james butler is an excellent writer but i wouldn't really call him a journalist i don't think (needs to write more than tweets at least weekly: "journal" actually means daily obv, but hardly anyone can keep up that rate)

(chuck, fair point there re that piece: i don't like that kind of stuff plus i don't think bush has much of a bead on french politics)

re: Novara I was joking and I've only engaged with it as a thing on twitter and a few bits here and there. Might be worth widening this to web-only. Only reading things that seem informative from scattered sources that come through my twitter TL so don't actually have many actual names #societryIsInTheGutter

likewise: my reading is scattershot to the point of being randomised (and as we know i'm easily distracted by piffle)

The LRB has a raft of good writers and is currently good for a kind of long-form story few others do in matters political, but again, not really journalism -- which i really think does require that it stands the test of the writer delivering something substantial (at a minimum) weekly, including responding at short notice to topical surprises.

Longstanding columnists are generally the opposite of substantial in this sense: either they use surprises (and everything else) as grist to their never-changing opinions amd perspectives, or -- even worse -- as grist to their Spiked-esque hot takes.

second chakraborty, foster, meeks. The supposedly left papers in england are brutal though. I wish there was an equivalent of democracy now or the intercept here. Opening the guardian is always such a glut of useless comment from jones, toynbee, freedland, etc., so tuned in to the rapid fire news culture, broad brushstrokes of opinion whizzing by without nuance or engagement.*

I liked David Runciman's extremely mean piece in the LRB recently even if it was largely an exercise in class snobbery.

*I do, however, like it when they get the fashion lady to be rude about politicians: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/jan/09/samantha-cameron-fashion-label-cefinn-hadley-freeman

Aditya Chakrabortty is remarkably, consistently good at what he does. So principled, intelligent, unafraid.

I like this piece by Oborne. Tory yet erm conscientious is the word I'd reach to describe a lot of what he does. It never feels like he is trolling the Telegraph although he might be enjoying playing a rebel card.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/corbyns-manifesto-middle-east-well-argued-radical-and-morally-courageous-2036528122

Gary Younge - like the way he looks at Pasokification and applies it to what we have seen so far: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/22/jeremy-corbyn-labour-anti-austerity-manifesto

never thought much of gary younge's stuff on america

will be glad if he's off that beat

In general journos struggle if they come off London or other major cities etc. (a big failing) so although I haven't read Younge's stuff on the US I wouldn't fancy anything happening there.

Caroline Molloy:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/caroline-molloy/local-councils-love-and-loathing-life-story

this rings so true:
"These bad habits were developed long before the 2008 financial crisis really made things tough. In the Blair years, being tough on services used mostly by poorer women and children became something of a macho rite of passage for ambitious New Labour councillors"

Not so as much as journalism but for commentary on-the-left-from-the-left the crew at New Socialist is worth the time:

https://twitter.com/NewSocialistUK

I've not read lots of it mainly because I can get what the article is going to say as I quite often follow the writer's tweets or know the general direction of travel from discussion on left-twitter.