Bedfellows

The Panorama/Telegraph sting on Patrick Mercer is unusual in a number of ways. I can't remember the BBC "going undercover" to target an MP before; and I have no recollection of any previous journalistic partnership with The Telegraph, increasingly dismissive of BBC failings under editor Tony Gallagher.

The Telegraph trio of credited reporters (so far) all have previous experience on the Sunday Times. Claire Newell is Investigations Editor; Holly Watt is Whitehall Editor, and seems to have lighted on the Fiji idea - " chosen as the subject of the lobbying investigation because it is an undeserving cause for back-bench MPs; and Daniel Foggo now bills himself as a self-employed tv journalist, after 16 years in Fleet Street.

BBC procedures for this sort of exercise are labyrinthine, and harder to navigate when money is used. The Telegraph/BBC partnership seems to have started in January, as Helen Boaden's tenure at News was coming to an end, and way before the arrival of James Harding from The Times. I presume the team had a pop at a cross-party selection of MPs, and Mercer is the only one who bought the sting in a big way.