Keir Starmer accidently stumbles into the debate about press lobbying – and opens up a can of worms.

Sky News political editor Beth Rigby looked momentarily stunned when Keir Starmer ‘gently’ challenged her about politicians accepting hospitality from the media corporation she works for.

Rigby had asked the Prime Minister about corporate gifts in general.

But the Labour leader hit back – and raised the unspoken subject of how the British media use corporate hospitality to their advantage when courting politicians.

The main abusers of this system are, of course, the tabloid press.

The elephant in the room so big that it’s obscured from the front pages of every national newspaper.

A subject the Prime Minister would not want, or even dare to articulate in normal circumstances - and it took a heated moment for it to slipout, almost accidentally.

Starmer said: And Beth, I might just gently say that Sky invite us to quite a lot of hospitality events. Your summer party is a great party costing thousands of pounds and you invite me every year. Presumably you want politicians to continue to come. And part of that is how politics…. He trails off, before fully articulating how the dark nature of this “politics” really works.

The Prime Minister appears be hinting at something which might be perceived to be reciprocal, if held to the same measure as the fierce charges he currently faces from the press, for accepting gifts from Labour donor Lord Alli?

It’s precisely that question that newspapers like the Sun the Mail and the Mirror don’t want politicians to articulate, “the optics” in this case being problematic for the press themselves.

Sun newspaper mogul, Rupert Murdoch’s own annual super elite summer soirée - held at the stunning Orangery in the Serpentine gallery at Kensington Gardens each year - sounds like a perfectly lovely affair, and one he is entitled to hold.

Yet, you won’t find reference to it in the gossip columns of the Sun, or the Times - or even the Mirror -  even though the guest list is handpicked to reflect the power players of British politics at that given moment and perfect newspaper fodder.

So, will Keir Starmer be the first Prime Minister to illuminate something of the cosy relationship between the press and politicians, which has never been examined and prevents publication of anything that might implicate the press in a negative light?

Will he be brave enough to challenge precisely how it operates and why it has led to a revolving door of journalists and politicians swapping senior positions regardless of their qualifications and experience?

After all, the British press is fond of explaining that public figures must accept extreme scrutiny, but their rich proprietors are agroup who still benefit from secrecy, even from their rival publications over such matters.

A few minutes after Starmer’s interview was aired, an announcement came that Serpentine party regular former conservative minister and former MP for Surrey Heath, Michael Gove, was to take over as the editor of the Spectator.

Previous editors include Boris Johnson, who had no journalistic qualifications.

The role seems to be one which requires something other than a normal CV and something more like political persuasion and friends in high places. In Gove’s case his friend the hedge fund tycoon and GB news backer Sir Paul Marshall, who recently bought the paper and declared Gove was “perfectly suited to the role.”

Isn’t it time we asked our newspapers to declare their corporate interests so we can scrutinise them with the same rigour they demand of others in the public eye?

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