Influence of local political journalism

DEAR Editor, “All politics is local!” For more than 20 years, the expert journalism of your departing Political Editor, Jonathan Walker, has testified in support of this declaration, oft-quoted by the late Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neil.

In his final column for you, Walker recalls how political coverage by local news organisations encouraged successive governments to support the renewal of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the revamped New Street Station and the Midlands Engine and as well as reinforcing cross-party support for HS2. These are defining issues each of which has had its own unique bearing here.

But I would go further. The regional dimension can lead to a truer understanding of developments across a much broader sweep of national policy-making.

When in 1994 the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, applied VAT to people’s domestic fuel bills, our colleagues reporting exclusively from within the Westminster village assured us that while Mr Clarke was indeed taking a risk, his “presentational skills” meant he should get away with it.

Those of us with one foot in the Lobby and the other in the loam of the regions knew better. “There’ll be hell to pay for this”, I remember telling them. And so it proved when the voters registered their protests in the ensuing local elections.

I am pleased Walker goes on to credit the Local Democracy Reporting Service under which the BBC funds journalists to cover local councils for newspapers including the Post & Mail, as well as for the BBC itself. From our different sides of the fence, he and I helped the BBC and the press to resolve enough of their longstanding differences to work together.

I need hardly invoke the ghosts of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith to remind you how important it is for reporters to shine their spotlights into all the nooks and crannies of local government. Without LDR, that council planning meeting on a cold, wet Wednesday evening might just have gone beyond the reach of our over-stretched newsrooms.

Good luck to Jonathan Walker with whatever he decides to do next. He can be proud that his consistently insightful, enterprising and original columns will be greatly missed by so many of us, his regular readers.

Patrick Burns Political Editor, BBC West Midlands

1998-2020