Yesterday Paul Ovenden resigned as Keir Starmer’s Director of Political Strategy after details emerged about sexually explicit messages he sent to colleagues about Diane Abbott MP in 2017. The reaction to this story exposes something rotten about the British media-political system, argues Angus Satow.

The British media’s response to Ovenden’s resignation has been in equal parts shocking and disgraceful. It is a useful microcosm of everything wrong with political journalism in this country, from a deeply flawed framework to outright chauvinism.

At one extreme we have the likes of the ever-egregious Harry Cole, who literally entirely omits Ovenden’s sexist actions, erases Abbott and the constant abuse she’s faced. He then suggests this is usual (workplace!) chat. What’s in your WhatsApps, Harry?

But as ever, the right are just the naked expression of what the liberal centre implicitly validates. Here’s one example:

Lewis Goodearl: “Big deal. Ovenden isn’t widely known outside of SW1 but he’s been a key figure in the Starmer operation and one of the sharpest political minds in the Labour Party.  Key McSweeney ally, will add to the sense of a political operation which is spiralling, just after reset.”

Again, it neglects any of what Ovenden did and its political context. It even praises him, echoing languages used by Labour sources elsewhere, incidentally.

As Mish Rahman has said, it is precisely this downplaying of the actual facts, alongside the vast attention given to Ovenden’s self-exculpatory whining about the manner of their release, that allows these people to come back time and again. They are not victims.

Indeed, the detail of Ovenden’s comments is downplayed, described in the Guardian as “inappropriate” and in the Times headline as “lurid”. Of course there are legitimate reasons why outlets might not want to publish sexually explicit content. But this is far from the sole issue.

Instead, huge focus is placed, by prominent political journalists across outlets, on the repercussions inside Number 10, who are seemingly furious Starmer didn’t save Ovenden.

That’s not wholly misplaced. Reporting what’s going on behind closed doors, who wields power, etc matters. The problem is that journalists allow themselves to be used as conduits for these internal battles, while failing to hold power to account, the supposed job of a fourth estate.

The court politics becomes the main focus – a self-reproducing cycle.

So political journalists have stressed the fury in Starmer’s team at Ovenden being sacked.

But none have, to my knowledge, questioned or cited questioning of this team for seeking to defend a man like this. What does it say about the political culture in Downing Street?

In this, sourcing culture plays a huge role. Downing Street staff brief on condition of anonymity, which is all too freely given by journos.

The upshot is that sackable statements are published anonymously, shaping political discourse, without any possibility of accountability.

Moreover, what does this episode say about Starmer’s now-absurd claims to be cleaning up politics, to be a steadfast opponent of racism, sexism, and sexual violence?

What did he know of Ovenden’s behaviour? Is this another Mandelson case where he let his faction’s mates off?

Zooming out, the media are again near-uniformly memory-holing the Forde Report. I can find one mention across all articles, which is in a quote from Abbott.

How is it that staff who engaged in abuse of Britain’s first Black woman MP were allowed to stay in post? And why were Martin Forde KC’s warnings about a lack of action on Starmer-Evans’ part regarding institutional racism ignored?

Objectively, these are far greater instances of institutional racism than anything during the ‘antisemitism crisis’. Yet they garner a fraction of the attention. That won’t be a surprise to Black and left-wing political observers.

Indeed it was notable that the only mainstream political journalists who meaningfully followed up on Forde and Labour were Black women – Serena Barker-Singh and Aletha Adu.

Finally, there is Mish Rahman’s shocking revelation that leading outlets had this story in 2024, then spiked it.

Why? If the answer is political convenience, then that exposes a deep rot at the heart of the British media-political system.

Angus Satow is a former Head of Communications at Momentum. This article is an edited version of a recent twitter (X) thread.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/number10gov/54718893193/. Creator: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str | Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str Copyright: Crown copyright. Licensed under the Open Government Licence Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed