Ex-Reuters correspondents as ministers? Only a fantasy

Suspend belief, for a moment or two, and consider what a government formed from Fleet Street would look like.

Brian Hitchen, former Fleet Street editor (Daily Star, Sunday Express) has drawn up a fantasy British government and two ex-Reuters men appear in his fanciful coalition cabinet.

They are Frederick Forsyth (photo top),​ former correspondent (Reuters 1961-1965), best-selling author and Eurosceptic Conservative commentator who is listed as Foreign Secretary, and John Fullerton (photo bottom) (Reuters 1983-2003), described as “ex-Reuters, and former MI6 agent of Afghanistan and Pakistan”, who appears as Minister for War in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister? Boris Johnson, editor, columnist, and Mayor of London.

“With one exception, none of our present cabinet ministers has ever held-down a meaningful job. And yet these mediocrities have the effrontery to put themselves forward as our leaders,” Hitchen writes on the website Gentlemen Ranters: the last pub in Fleet Street. “Running a country is too big a job for politicians, who care only for their own survival.

“So, rather like a fantasy football team, let’s speculate as to what would happen if journalists, and newspaper folk, formed a Fleet Street coalition, and took over the jobs that are too important to clutter-up with party politics." ■