My attitude to columnists critical of political journalists like me is that I'm glad they're saying what they're saying but I can't bring myself to join them
On my return home for Christmas my mum handed me a battered red book of my schoolboy autograph collection. Alongside my prized signatures - George Best and Sir Matt Busby - was one from the man who used to read out the football results on the BBC's Look North, a man I admired even as he informed me of Manchester United's latest failure (this was the Seventies, remember). I'd attended his funeral just weeks earlier. The signature was Nick Clarke's, a man who went on to become my favourite political interviewer.
Nick combined fearlessness and persistence without lapsing into rudeness or disrespect. He produced my favourite riposte to an evasive politician: "Do you think, Mr Darling, that, just for the sake of neatness, you could address the question I asked you?" Rather more subtle than my own question which, to my surprise, has made me the pin-up - albeit a temporary one - of the anti-war movement. In the run-up to the war I, along with most political correspondents, was regularly condemned for being an unquestioning cipher for Blair and Bush. Yet ever since I asked Tony's friend whether he might be "in denial" about how it was going, I've found myself hailed for standing up to "the warmonger, Bush". Being asked to write the NS Diary I regard as the ultimate accolade!
My question stimulated a transatlantic debate about whether this was an example of a Brit fearlessly speaking truth to power or a disrespectful grandstanding visitor. It's a debate I have been having with myself ever since. In part that's because some of our more distinguished columnists - the Guardian's Martin Kettle, the Independent's Steve Richards and David Aaronovitch of the Times - have been raising their voices to warn fellow journalists about the impact we're having on trust in the political process. My attitude to them is rather like my attitude to the church - I'm glad they're saying what they're saying but I can't bring myself to join them. They are right to want rather more Clarke-ite interviewing and rather less of the "come off it minister" variety. These critics are also right to condemn reporting that is unfair, shallow and pack-driven, but they don't, I believe, distinguish enough between the roles of opinionated commentators and those of us reporting events day by day and hour by hour. They look at the predicament the government finds itself in - on cash for honours, Iraq, or the NHS - and say "it's not fair". That's their job. It's not mine.
New resolution
I do, however, have a New Year's resolution that might cheer them. It is to do more to highlight the dilemmas facing politicians. I try to do this in Decision Time, a new series on Radio 4. In it, former civil servants and ministers of all political colours reveal how decisions are taken and the tactics used by Whitehall departments and interest groups to stop them. The first programme focused on the problems of trying to curb air travel in order to address climate change. Afterwards, a relative who often complains that politicians lack principles told me that he now understood how difficult it was. I regard that as the highest compliment. If I can achieve the same after a two-minute TV news report I'll be getting somewhere.
Chips with curry
I travelled this week to Blackburn, Lancashire and to Blackburn, East Lothian for a report on the state of the Union, now in its 300th year. You may think that unlike war reporters I take no risks. Think again. After a heated discussion about the attitudes of the English to the Scots and vice versa one man left the bar, bought himself a portion of chips with curry sauce and returned to throw them at your intrepid correspondent. My sin? I had not brought our boys home from the war in Iraq.
Talking of chips, I was reminded of the havoc globalisation is wreaking on our diet. At Old Trafford I was offered a dish I'd not heard of before. It was Mancunian Chicken made, the menu said, with sweetcorn relish and Monetary (sic) Jack. I assume they meant an American cheese not a G8 finance minister. In my day, Mancunian chicken would have come in a page from the Evening News or, if you were posh, in a basket.
Nick Robinson is the BBC's political editor. "Decision Time" is on Radio 4 on Wednesdays at 8pm and is repeated on Saturdays at 10.15pm
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