Allegra Stratton is a troubling pick for a bad role | Martin Kettle

Revamping the job of Downing Street press secretary is a constitutional error, and journalism is weakened by Stratton doing it

Allegra Stratton should have refused to become the new Downing Street press secretary. I have three big reasons for saying this, and none of them has anything to do with party politics, or my views about the Conservatives or Boris Johnson, or even my liking for Stratton herself.

The first is that, whoever got it, this job is a very bad innovation. Britain has a parliamentary system not a presidential one. It’s important to keep it that way and not undermine it. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister should be answerable to MPs in the House of Commons first, and to the media second. When John Bercow was Speaker, but also now under his successor Lindsay Hoyle, there has been a big effort to make sure that this happens more regularly and more fully. The new post, with its proposed daily televised on-the-record briefings, deliberately turns that on its head.

Related: Boris Johnson is using the Covid crisis as a pretext for a power grab | Gina Miller

Continue reading...