I chaired a con­fer­ence ses­sion on some inter­est­ing work by Gavin Rees on journ­al­ism and trauma this morning.

I missed the after­noon, but the ever-sensible Mar­tin Moore was there for another step in the rehab­il­it­a­tion of former lob­by­ist Derek Draper:

John Lloyd (journ­al­ist and dir­ector of Reu­ters Insti­tute for Study of Journ­al­ism) and Derek Draper (ex journ­al­ist, ex lob­by­ist, ex New Labour insider, now adult and child psy­cho­ther­ap­ist — no, really — see here) were talk­ing about whether it was an interviewer’s respons­ib­il­ity to ‘human­ise’ politicians.

In Derek Draper’s view our polit­ical inter­views lack emo­tion. Not just the heat that comes from a typ­ical Today pro­gramme cross-examination but raw human emo­tion — think Hillary’s tears in New Hamp­shire or Sarkozy’s romantic con­fes­sions. It’s only when they show this emo­tion — expose them­selves as humans with feel­ings, Draper argued, that people con­nect and engage with them.

Does this mean that rather than John Humphrys grilling Gor­don Brown about the NHS dur­ing the 8.10am inter­view, he should instead ask him about how he feels, how he’s get­ting on with his col­leagues (and fam­ily?) and what cheers him up? In Draper’s view the answer is yes.

Aaarrrgghh. As if we don’t have enough emot­ing already. As if the air­waves, the press, and now the inter­net aren’t full of fea­ture pieces, con­fes­sion­als, and emo­tional out­pour­ings. The rel­at­ive space, time and money given to ques­tion­ing the gov­ern­ment about what it’s actu­ally doing is shrink­ing and shrink­ing. Proper scru­tiny of the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment? Declin­ing. Detailed ana­lysis of the effect­ive­ness of depart­ments? Dis­ap­pear­ing. Local gov­ern­ment report­ing? Mostly gone. Courts? Gone.

And now Draper (who seemed to reflect the views of some of the audi­ence — and pre­sum­ably oth­ers out­side) wants to turn the few spaces left into couch con­fes­sions. Help.

John Lloyd (who prior to Draper’s present­a­tion quite liked the idea of inter­view­ers mak­ing politi­cians more human) was, by the end, cry­ing out for their ‘dehu­man­isa­tion’- or at least that they be approached ration­ally rather than emo­tion­ally. Politi­cians should be asked what they’re doing, Lloyd said, not who they are.

Lloyd’s right, of course. But what was Draper doing there? Just ten years ago, Draper was being called out by Greg Palast. Here is Palast describ­ing Draper the lob­by­ist:

…from our first New York-to-London call, Draper gos­siped, gushed and ulti­mately could not res­ist reveal­ing his spe­cial access to the Treas­ury and 10 Down­ing Street, Britain’s White House.

If we retained his firm, what could he deliver for our money? Could he secure a seat on one of the government’s task forces? Done! “We just got the Chief Exec­ut­ive of Brit­ish Gas on the government’s Wel­fare to Work Task Force.”

Draper emphas­ized that win­ning this coveted spot at the elbow of the chan­cel­lor was an enorm­ous achieve­ment for a com­pany once known in Labour circles as “the Fat Cats headed by Cedric the Pig” (an unkind ref­er­ence to former Brit­ish Gas chair­man Cedric Brown).

What if my cli­ents had repu­ta­tions far less savoury than BG? Not a problem.

In fact, Draper was about to sign up such a “chal­len­ging” cli­ent, US lot­tery oper­ator GTech Corp, a com­pany whose luc­rat­ive links to Bush allies in Texas I was also invest­ig­at­ing. Gtech was in hot water. A jury had found Gtech’s CEO guilty of attempt­ing to bribe Brit­ish tycoon Richard Bran­son, hop­ing to buy him out of the com­pet­i­tion to run Britain’s lottery.

While run­ning for office, Blair had com­mit­ted to oust these Ugly Amer­ic­ans from the con­sor­tium which had exclus­ive rights to oper­ate the United Kingdom’s lot­tery. Draper described his scheme-in-progress to waltz GTech around the offi­cial watch­dogs and lure Blair’s min­is­ters into a sticky web of agree­ments with his new client.

“The gov­ern­ment needed someone to sell tick­ets for this ridicu­lous Mil­len­nium Dome thing that my old boss is build­ing. But GTech is offer­ing to do that via the national lottery-selling equipment.

Now it doesn’t take a lot to work out that if the gov­ern­ment thinks that GTech can sell gov­ern­ment tick­ets for the Dome then it’s got to be a legit­im­ate firm to sell tick­ets for the lottery.

See what I mean? Our forte, like, is to be ima­gin­at­ive.” His “old boss” was The Dark Prince, Min­is­ter Peter Man­del­son. To call Draper and “Mandy” close would be a griev­ous under­state­ment. Mandy had ded­ic­ated his book, The Blair Revolu­tion, to the young man.

In a pro­file in Busi­ness on Sunday Draper said his friend­ships with top office– hold­ers were a “hindrance” to his lob­by­ing busi­ness because his former work­mates are “all so con­cerned to be eth­ical”. Nev­er­the­less, Draper assured me that, if we needed to change a law to our lik­ing, “I can have tea with Geof­frey Robin­son! I can get in to Ed Balls!”

When Draper spoke of reach­ing Blair cab­inet heavy­weights Pay­mas­ter Gen­eral Robin­son and Balls, the chancellor’s chief adviser, you could hear the exclam­a­tion points in his voice. He added, “Once someone pays us.”

When Draper calls for more emo­tion in polit­ics, be care­ful. Be VERY, VERY CAREFUL.