From today, I will be periodically providing FT Westminster readers with some jottings from the backbenches. David Cameron has promised to make transparency a watchword of the “new politics” and the purpose of the blog will be to try to help the FT’s political team, led by George Parker, to shed even more light into the murky Gothic interior of the Palace of Westminster.
The postings will be pretty random, in frequency and subject matter. It would be hard for me to compete with FT Westminster bloggers Alex Barker and Jim Pickard on the scoop front – and that, for obvious reasons, is not the idea. But I do hope to bring something of an insider’s perspective onto politics and policy-making in the new parliament. If I fail to do so, my blog will deservedly die a speedy death.
Jo Johnson, a former editor of the FT’s Lex column, is the newly-elected Conservative MP for Orpington.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey