Given that they need to write multiple stories a day, while also appearing on podcasts and 24-hour news channels, lobby journalists cannot plausibly understand policy detail or how financial markets work. It’s also not what they’re good at. Their skillset is to nose around and cause trouble. If you want a scandal covered or to get insider tidbits on a juicy internal row, then the UK lobby is the envy of the world. If you want a sober analysis of welfare policy, it is not. | Which means everything that happens now gets turned into a political row, because that’s what the journalists whose job it is to cover politicians do. –Sam Freedman, Prospect