The BBC and corporate media coalesce around an extremely narrow consensus of political thought, and ensure that anybody who steps outside that consensus is ridiculed and marginalised. That consensus has got narrower and narrower. I was delighted during the general election to be able to listen to Nicola Sturgeon during the leaders’ debate argue for anti-austerity policies and for the scrapping of Trident. I had not heard anyone on broadcast media argue for the scrapping of Trident for a decade – it is one of those views which though widely held the establishment gatekeepers do not view as respectable.
The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. They have huge areas of agreement that stand equally outside the establishment consensus. Indeed Nicola is more radical than Jeremy, who wants to keep the United Kingdom.
The establishment’s great difficulty is this. Given that the SNP had just slaughtered the Labour Party – and the Tories and Lib Dems – by being a genuine left wing alternative, how can the media consensus continue to insist that the left are unelectable? The answer is of course that they claim Scotland is different. Yet precisely the same establishment consensus denies that Scotland has a separate political culture when it comes to the independence debate. So which is it? They cannot have it both ways.
If Scotland is an integral part of the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s policies cannot be unelectable.
Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.
A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”
There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.
The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.
Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.
Percentage of Eligible Voters
1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%
There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.
More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.
The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.
It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election
Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.
The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.
The stupid stunt by Tories of signing up to the Labour Party to vote for Corbyn to ridicule him, is exactly the kind of device the establishment consensus uses to marginalise those whose views they fear. Sturgeon is living proof left wing views are electable. The “left unelectable” meme will intensify. I expect Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest problem will be quiet exclusion. I wish him well.
“You might be aware that Ken Livingstone and David Melon (sorry, Melor) have a weekly phone-in show on LBC Radio. As a rule of thumb I do not phone in to these kinds of programmes but couldn’t resist phoning on a recent occasion when the topic of Iraq came up. I got on air and mentioned Melor’s illegal dealings with the Iraqi tyrant at Baghdad’s Al Raheed Hotel as outlined by Pilger above. Needless to say, after what was clearly an embarrassing and humiliating silence, I was cut off.”
_________________
Good for you Daniel,you should’ve called them back and asked them what they were playing at.
LBC, isn’t that the station that Nick Clegg had a weekly guest spot on.
More difficult question need to be asked over the war in Iraq, it doesn’t look like the Chilcot report will be available anytime soon.
KOWN
“‘Magic Circle’ is, I believe, not being used here to refer to stage magicians and conjurors but to a putative ring of paedophiles operating at the heart of the Scottish legal establishment in the 90s, some of whom it appears may have protected Lord Janner.”
_______________
Oh, OK, so Lysias wasn’t referring to the magicians’ and conjurers’ Magic Circle. I thought he was because funnily enough he also wrote as follows:
“I’ve read (I can’t now remember where) suggestions that Janner used magic tricks to seduce boys.”
🙂
ROS, Yes Clegg had a spot on it as, I think, does Boris the clown.
Macky: “The first two random things I thought of, aardvark & teapot, produced 97,600 results, when I thought that maybe aardvarks were somehow a very popular choice to decorate teapots, I tried aardvark & wellington boots, which gave 1,900,000 hits ! ”
Nice one.
Mod
Thank you for pointing out where Daniel lifted that chunk from (Socialist Worker). I now understand better why he was spouting a lot of Marxist guff when we were discussing immigration and employment a while back.
I am definitely warming to you. 🙂
RoS : “Maybe I’m being rather harsh on BL, as I have some fond memories, which include certain models,such as the Austin Princess,and the Maxi.”
Indeed, but sadly none have been seen for many years. By contrast, old Escorts, the odd Capri and VW Beatles and Golfs – even in their Mk1 form – are still around in surprisingly large numbers. That’s a sad reflection on their poor build quality, not just their popularity (or lack thereof) or numbers produced.
“Macky: “The first two random things I thought of, aardvark & teapot, produced 97,600 results, when I thought that maybe aardvarks were somehow a very popular choice to decorate teapots, I tried aardvark & wellington boots, which gave 1,900,000 hits ! ”
Nice one.”
____________________
I agree and take off my hat to you, Macky, that was genuinely funny and a masterful put-down.
I hope I don’t start warmong to you as well 🙂
fuck it! “warming”
@Anon1
“I don’t think fear has anything to do with it. Remember that the Tories used to applaud Ed Miliband at PMQs. It’s a recognition that the opposition hasn’t a chance of success and is destined to failure, just like Corbyn and the left.”
Perhaps you should remember that it is worth remembering that it was arrogance like this that and all that TINA nonsense that explains why there was an 18 year period without a majority Tory government that has only just come to an end. Perhaps in a few year’s time when growth has been choked off by spending cuts and the deficit hasn’t reduced by very much if at all – as happened in the first few years of the Coalition then we will see if the old Tory neo classical economic arguments can be used to mislead the electorate yet again. My guess is that it will be rather more difficult for the Tories to get their arguments across whoever is the Labour leader (and it won’t be Corbyn!)
I’m afraid even if we accept the premise that the West/CIA supported Saddam and other tyrants when they came to power that does not excuse the primary responsibilities of those tyrants for the abuses that they carried out NOR does it rationalise the actions of people like Galloway and not a few here who will be nameless (including those who penned eulogies to Saddam’s loyal toadie Tariq Aziz) who then support said tyrants who were brought to power by their beloved “USatan”.
Medialens has a new piece up on the Sunday Times’s Snowden debacle: ‘Address Your Remarks To Downing Street’ –The Sunday Times Editor Deepens His Snowden Debacle.
Apparently, the Sunday Times’s most recent edition followed up on that monstrosity of an article by the same Tom Harper claiming that Liam Fox (yes, that Liam Fox!) had written to the Metropolitan police commissioner urging him to investigate Snowden for causing “great potential damage to the national security of the United Kingdom”.
The Medialens piece reports this quote from George Orwell, of which I was unaware:
Should have been “followed up on that monstrosity of an article with another by the same Tom Harper”.
John Spencer-Davis; “That is true of much of the book, but not of Mark Essex, who was a mass murderer in a similar way to others we have recently seen; that is why I mentioned him particularly.”
Not so I think; yes mass murder is mass murder, but there is a distinct difference between say Mark Essex, who killings were committed on separate occasions, his actions were more not at well planned but rather ad hoc, and he didn’t want to get caught, let alone get killed, as compared to say somebody like Adam Peter Lanza, responsible for the Sandy Hook killings; Lanza actions on that day were very much a suicide note; he acted intentionally and planned his actions carefully, he knew exactly what he was doing; he firstly killed his mother, and then went to the school to kill shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members, before killing himself.
John Spencer-Davis; “I’m afraid I am quite cynical about that. It makes them sound almost heroic.”
Well heroic is your subjective take, but why so skeptical about their perceived motivation to right a social wrong ? Apart from the those that do cite social reasons, like this latest one’s “blacks taking over” reason, for even the ones for whom motivations cannot ascertain, their crime against their society & their effective suicides, can be interpreted in one way as a response to a perceived personal injustice inflicted by Society at large. If you are cynical about this, any other ideas about motivations ?
If motivational factors could be identified, then we may be able to address the frightening fact that these incidents are occurring more & more regularly;
“According to a report released last October, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that the rate of all mass shootings in America had essentially tripled in the previous three years. Between 1982 and late 2011, mass shootings occurred about every 200 days. But after September 2011, the rate of mass shootings increased to about once every 64 days, according to the Harvard researchers.And they can’t explain why.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/06/18/charleston-deaths-are-an-american-tragedy-mass-shootings-are-rising/
Resident Dissident
“there was an 18 year period without a majority Tory government that has only just come to an end”
______________
??
By “no majority” I take it you are referring to the popular vote (ie, percentage of the electorate which voted Conservative)?
@KOWN, thanks for the Magic Circle clarification.
@Lysias, apologies if my Google hits point came across as a put-down, it certainly wasn’t meant as such; I reserve such intentional point making to those whose own bad manners merits it !
Macky, if I’m wrong you’re right to point it out. My Google argument may not have constituted proof, but I continue to suspect there is a connection.
Ah, my gold Capri: beautiful (only a 1.6 but I could dream it was a 2.8)
Sorry, was that off topic?
—
[ Mod: Absolutely not. ]
Habbabkuk, Labour came to power in 1997 and had majorities until 2005. The next government was the Conservative-Libdem coalition, ie. not a Conservative majority. The Conservatives got a majority of just twelve this year;
2015 -1997 = 18 years without a majority.
Sorry; “Labour came to power in 1997 and had majorities until 2010“
KingOfWelshNoir 24 Jun, 2015 – 9:30 pm :“‘Magic Circle’ is, I believe, not being used here to refer to stage magicians and conjurors but to a putative ring of paedophiles operating at the heart of the Scottish legal establishment in the 90s, some of whom it appears may have protected Lord Janner.”
This confusion arose on an earlier thread and I checked it out. I came to the conclusion that references to Janner’s Magic Circle were referring to the organisation founded in London in 1905, dedicated to promoting and advancing the art of magic.
There was a so-called “Magic Circle” operating in the Scottish legal establishment in the 1990s but it doesn’t seem to have any connection with Janner. Supposedly the magic circle comprised judges who were being blackmailed into giving lenient sentences to rentboys. However the story may have been a bluff created by a well known defence lawyer called Robert Henderson who was hinting he would name names if he was prosecuted for molesting his daughter. The daughter has recently gone on record as saying that former Solicitor General Sir Nicholas Fairbairn MP also raped her.
A google search for “Macky” and “Lysias” yields 113,000 hits.
Well, there won’t be a Daily Mail headline about this, because they won’t report it. But if they did…
SPASTIC WELFARE SCROUNGERS STORM PARLIAMENT
“Welfare parasites sitting in wheelchairs today disrupted the legal business of Parliament in order to screw more money out of the tax payer. They are most probably all immigrants and don’t belong in our civilised society”.
Magic Circle
Well, they do try… But Black forces Rather more apt i can’t say if there are any such thing as Black forces..other than Human Reptilians…Camerons Ect.. But i Know the Reiki ( White Magic ) works, it is ancient Tibetan
American Neo-Nazi David Duke has predictably weighed in to the issue of banning the Confederate flag with an online article called “The Jewish Attack on the Confederate Flag”. Presumably, he fails to realise that the Confederate flag in the form that we know it (my mistake not the earlier ‘stars and bars’ but the one nicknamed the ‘stainless banner’ came about because elements of the southern Jewish community/fighting forces preferred the St. Andrew’s cross to the St George’s cross flag that was originally suggested – possibly because England expelled its Jewish population whereas Scotland (which also felt that Edward I was bad news) didn’t.
sorry link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
@RobG: “Well, there won’t be a Daily Mail headline about this, because they won’t report it. But if they did…
SPASTIC WELFARE SCROUNGERS STORM PARLIAMENT
“Welfare parasites sitting in wheelchairs today disrupted the legal business of Parliament in order to screw more money out of the tax payer. They are most probably all immigrants and don’t belong in our civilised society”.”
Yup, alisas The Daily (Hate) Mail.
…or rather ‘alias’ if I knew how to spell:)
Macky, thanks:
I wrote a fair bit about underlying factors here. IMO racism and white supremacy are front and centre, but I agree with you there are cultural magnifiers. I’d posit the myth of the all-American masculine hero, the ego-driven and selfish capitalist environment that gives rise to it, and the absence of welfare and universal mental health-care that might reduce the numbers of people being tipped over the edge.
Regarding the discussion about Confederate flags and statues now happening in the US, it seems to me there has been a longstanding failure to address the sins of the past as well. However, perhaps this time around there is appetite to further reduce the acceptability of these symbols of latent racism, and to quell their potency.
I’ll happily give my thoughts on paedophilia if it is related to the topic of Charleston, presumably still the topic under discussion. The reason I asked you for your views on white supremacism was that I thought it was relevant, and that our colour privilege should not bar us from, I suppose, questioning the failures of “our” own cultural past. After all, we’re not white supremacists, we’re not Dylann Roof, and we’re not being held accountable for other people’s racism. Thus, we’re free in the scientific sense to examine how much hardline racism is a factor in this case, and to happily condemn such ideology, without feeling as if we’re being asked to apologise for someone else’s actions.
I was with all you guys before the Iraq War started in 2003///Over 1 Million of us Marched Together Against The Nu_LABOUR Party and The Fact That They Had Bee InFrilrated By Such Evil BASTARDS…
Few people actually realised this, but I sure as hell I did..though I didn’t have the Courage of Craig Murray..which is why he still stands out amongst you kids fighting over silly disagreements and your lives posting on Craig Murrays website…
Now..I know i have been banned (even self banned)..I actually changed the config of my computer so that I couldn’t post on Craig Murray’s website when out of my mind…and I told your Murray’s Moderator Clark..how to do it..and he did and then had a nervous breakdown over it…but lets face it…There are Some REALLY EVIL BASTARDS out there…and most of us are on the same side..even including that strange bloke Habbie or wtf he is called…he doesn’t know the fuck of what is Really Going on..He thinks he does ..but he ain’t got a clue ans is as boring as fuck…
Anyhow I wrote this…
Why won’t anyone in the media including Dan Hodges tell the truth about anything. What is the matter with you people?
My wife and I had a brilliant time tonight..and it seems many of our friends not only want to..but are moving to Spain….
Maybe they saw our photos and videos…but we only went there for a week – it was a holiday..and I am not saying it wasn’t utterly totally brilliant..but that was one week’s holiday…with loads of English people.
We’ve all come home now to England…
And you are moving out…well if you want to do that, rent a place for at least 6 months and move around…if you can take the intense heat that is going to be the next 3 months and really like it…then fine.
Personally, I would be bored shiitless after 2 weeks and want to be back in lovely cold green England with my family and friends…
Have you ever wondered why so many Spanish people have moved to England?
Just sayin’..do what you want…explore the entire world if you have the energy..
Its a big place.
ENGLAND is The BEST.
Tony
Tony Opmoc,
England or anywhere else aint the best.
Everywhere is,potentially.
One world,one blood etc..
You know this anyway you old farter =)