Televised lobby briefings should increase accountability – but No 10 is also motivated by self-interest

Team Johnson will need a more open process for the new normal to have credibility, says Andrew Grice

Downing Street has decided the afternoon lobby briefing will be televised from the autumn (PA)

When I joined the band of Westminster-based journalists in 1982, the lobby rulebook I was handed dictated that Downing Street’s twice-daily briefings be attributed only to anonymous “Whitehall sources”.

After a boycott of the outdated system by The Independent and other newspapers in the late 1980s, the media was allowed to say the briefings were from “Downing Street sources” and, in 1997, the prime minister’s spokesperson.

Various reforms have been tried since, as governments tried to bypass the lobby. Labour flirted with televised briefings by a minister, but the love affair was short-lived; politicians inevitably tripped up on questions beyond their own brief.