The secret life of the leader writer

The latest series of Andrew Rawnsley’s ‘Leader Conference’ on Radio 4 starts tonight…keenly awaited obviously. But having been on the programme a couple of times – though not, funnily, since I did a piece for this magazine about the difficulty a woman has in getting her oar in across the masculine timbre of Danny Finkelstein et al – perhaps I should disabuse you that this admirable series actually replicates what happens in a leader conference. It’s very good, as everything my old friend Andrew does, but just not quite the same as the thing itself. This, I may say, is something of a specialist subject of mine, on account of leader writing being my bread and butter and having done it for different papers. (Ahem, nothing I say should be taken as the opinion of the paper for which I work…)

Anyway, the theory is that you argue every issue from first principles – what do we feel about ‘The Cuts To Government Spending’ sort of thing.