I have already made clear I am really quite bored by those on the left who are currently inclined to say that Labour lost because the BBC, the rest of the broadcast media, the mainstream press and whoever else had an opinion to offer were all aligned against them in the election just held.
I am not saying that the BBC do not have questions to answer. I am not saying the mainstream press is unbiased when it clearly is. I am saying that these are known facts. And I am saying that parties can win despite these known facts. I know this because of the Scottish election result (this thanks to CommonSpace):
The SNP is seemingly loathed by the BBC, the entire Scottish establishment and, the National newspaper apart (and it is very small) the whole Scottish print media. Nationalists fumed against them all during the campaign. And they increased their vote, significantly, despite the mainstream media.
In other words, this can be done.
But you must have a story that is well worked out; is worth telling; is told repeatedly and consistently, and appears credible on the doorstep.
The SNP had that.
Labour did not.
And that's the difference.
It's time for the Left to stop blaming the media. The Left is not a victim, except of its own excuses.
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Richard
Re the SNP, you need to take into account that we Scots are thrawn. Which might possibly also explain why there are still six Tory MPs north of the border!
Well, yes and no. Many if not most in Scotland noted the MSM bias in 2014, and have discounted their “stories” since then. Hence the different levels of trust in the BBC (& licence fee compliance), for one.
I have to agree. In the latest Labourlist survey, in answer to the question about faults in the Labour campaign, I ticked “Messaging”.
Labour got this badly wrong, where Johnson got it spectacularly right: banging away at “Get BREXIT done”, as opposed to a cornucopia of excellent policy proposals that were not bound together with a central theme, and which looked like Unicorn politics, coming from a Party that had allegedly “bankrupted the country”, and only “last week” had been talking about a Fiscal Credibility Rule just didn’t look credible. The policies were largely right, but were woefully presented.
I won’t comment on the leadership and antisemitism issues, except to say that I now see how valid was the criticism of Corbyn’s leadership – the “rock star” reception (see http://www.progressivepulse.org/society/the-public-love-him-wherever-he-turns-up-hes-greeted-like-a-rock-star) he received wherever he went, as compared with the barracking and booing of Johnson – masked a wider disapproval of him.
As to the antisemitism charge, this was always unfair, ill-founded and untrue, but again, the messaging and handling were also woefully poor.
Agree 100%..
The left naturally look for excuses for failure and the media is an easy one. In this “period of reflection” the same people will make the same mistakes. It is questionable whether Labour can survive this if it continues to be led by Momentum and the Unions as they are out of touch with everyone except their own soundbites. A new left centrist party may need to emerge.
I have absolutely no love for Corbyn but he is the most maligned politician and certainly the most maligned leader in modern UK political history. He the and the Labour Party by association were never going to be allowed to “tell their story” or make it “meaningful” as they were tainted by the demonisation of Corbyn by the media from his election as leader in 2015.
We fell out some time ago when I warned that Corbyn carried too much baggage from his Foot and Bennite days to ever be an effective leader in opposition to brexit as his constant vacillation on the subject have proved. However, we now have politicians and commentators absolving the media of any responsibility in his and Labours defeat which is a calumny.
Corbyn and the Labour left were made unelectable by the media led by a cabal of Jewish/Israeli interests attacking anything they saw as support for the Palestinian position and any criticisms arising focused at the Jewish state.
Before May 2015 there were 18 incidents in articles conflating Corbyn with antisemitism out of 3659 articles found and after May there were 6133. During the first three years of Corbyn’s Labour leadership, there were 2087 articles associating him and the Labour party with antisemitism that is an average of nearly two per day. Yet in more than six and a half years preceding his election, just 178 articles were published associating the Party with antisemitism.
Norman Finkelstein, Jewish author of ‘The Holocaust Industry’ and the son of Holocaust survivors, commented,
“The degree of anti-Semitism infecting British society has been the subject of numerous polls over a sustained period of time. These surveys have uniformly, consistently, and unambiguously concluded that anti-Semitism (1) has long been a marginal phenomenon in British society, infecting under 10 percent of the population, (2) is far less salient than hostility to other British minorities, and (3) is less pronounced in the UK than almost anywhere else in Europe.”
“Jeremy Corbyn is the democratically elected head of the Labour Party. His ascendancy vastly expanded and galvanized the party’s ranks. Corbyn has devoted a lifetime to fighting racism; like eponymous labour organizer Joe Hill, where workers strike and organize, it’s there you’ll find Jeremy Corbyn. By British and even global leadership standards, he cuts a saintly figure. On the opposite side, mostly unelected Jewish bodies have dragged Corbyn’s name through the mud, slandering and defaming him. They have refused to meet with Corbyn, even as he has repeatedly extended olive branches and offered substantive compromises. Instead they issue take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums.”
‘The transparent motive behind this cynical campaign is to demonize Corbyn, not because he’s a “fucking anti-Semite,” [the words of former Labour minister Margaret Hodge] but because he’s a principled champion of Palestinian rights’, although ‘a broad array of powerful entrenched social forces, acting on not-so-hidden agendas of their own’ are all seeking to destroy Corbyn.
75-80% of all Corbyn coverage has been negative while the opposite is true of the Tories. The vast majority of news stories, opinion pieces, or letters to the editor deride Corbyn’s ideas, his personal life, his looks and lifestyle. In addition, he has continually been portrayed as unelectable, that his ideas are unrealistic and he is an unpatriotic loony a friend of the IRA Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and terrorism none of which stands up to any serious scrutiny but then when did the truth ever bother a Tory brexiteer.
Labour activists of old are spinning in their grave at the utter stupidity of their progeny in electing a Tory government who throughout history have done nothing to advance their plight as they were witness to and fought against to give themselves and their descendants a better future. When it comes to the working class as far the Tories are concerned nothing is ever sustainable pensions, NHS, public spending etc but other sections of society are featherbedded with tax and investment advantages in the forlorn hope that trickle down economics will benefit those further down the food chain. Does work ? No it does NOT. £440 billion of QE is a testament to that. For every £1 pumped into the financial system just 8p made it into the real economy. Had that been injected directly into the real economy for productive purposes that velocity would have increased to £2.38 for every £1 spent. What happened is the rich got richer through asset bubbles overpricing their underlying value which lays the foundation for another monumental crash and the poor got poorer.
A stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. No wonder past generations are spinning in their graves. One truism is most apposite “NEVER TRUST A TORY” and by extension its media. Let responsibility lie where it falls and implement the Levenson enquiry recommendations and legislation
So, in summary, you just want to make excuses to ensure Labour loses again?
I’m sorry – but these arguments are exactly why Labour failed
I made no attempt to justify nor defend any fault in Corbyn’s campaign, manifesto or leadership as I had already predicted his and the party’s demise a long time ago when you and others were defending him. The only thing that has surprised me is how long he has lasted.
I merely pointed out that there is a causal relationship between Corbyn’s treatment and demonisation by the media for 4.5 years which made him and the Labour party unelectable irrespective of any policy he might have chosen to follow.
The fact that most of the adverse coverage was inaccurate and a misrepresentation of fact leading to extreme bias seems to go unnoticed or challenged. That cannot be right and the media should be held to account for it and its undoubted effect on the electorate.
The media do have history with this. I remember ‘donkey jacket’ Michael Foot, ‘windbag’ Neil Kinnock, ‘grumpy and dour’ Gordon Brown and ‘bacon sandwich’ Ed Milliband which, in his case, included a disgusting character assassination of his father, with many negative comments about character being made well before any election. Only John Smith, who died before facing a general election, and Tony Blair, who did a deal with Murdoch, fared better. If the media campaigns of vilification etc towards putative labour prime ministers, especially by the printed media, were deemed to have no effect on the outcome why would they bother to do it?
Tobacco advertising was banned many years ago although the companies defended it on the basis they were not promoting smoking but retaining brand loyalty, so I presume the press would argue the same.
Jim – do you have a source for the numbers of articles on Labour & anti-semitism etc.? I recalled reading similar a long while back now, but haven’t been able to find it.
It was originally one of the universities who provided the stats but I can’t remember which one, however, the Pro request website seems to be the place to get the up to date info also Media lens website appears to use the Pro request data base on the subject and gives a good account of the Corbyn’s demonisation
Cardiff, I think
Thanks both, that should be plenty to go on.
Missing from your commentary: circa 70% of British Jews vote conservative. All is fair in love, war & politics (as we recently discovered & frankly I wish it was not so). Pre-2015 Corbyn was a back-bencher, post 2016 he was labour leader, at which point, the conservatives unpacked weapons they could use against him. Go for the man & it worked, supported by 70% of British Jews who, to varying degrees, wanted this attack line to work.
Counterfactual: let’s say that Corbyn had tirelessly campaigned against the growth of golfcourses (rather than for fairness for Palestine). As a backbencher he would have a low profile. Once leader, the tory chorus would have been: golfers – Corbyn wants to destroy your golf courses. 80% of golfers vote tory ….guess what. Oh & there were golfers in the Labour party who were also against Corbyn. Thus a man who campaigned for fairness & justice did not stand a chance. That says a great deal about UK society – what a truly vile country – groomed by a truly vile media.
I have not a doubt some of the challenge was purely disguised party politics
But Labour still managed it badly
Politicians need to be able to handle being attacked
A point of detail, but attribution is important, and CommonSpace seem to have omitted to mention that they did not compile either the map or the table – the map is copied from the BBC and the table from Wikipedia. So thank to them too, no doubt.
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50770798
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election_in_Scotland#Results
On the main point, it probably helped that the SNP had a fairly simple message. 48/59 seats in Scotland is pretty extraordinary (if not quite so off the chart as the 56/59 in 2015). Even after losing 6 seats, Wales is still 22/40 Labour. But with 500+ seats England is always going to be the elephant in the room.
Thanks
I think you’re oversimplifying it. While the ‘story’ and how it’s presented is of course the critical first campaign step, one cannot dismiss the level of concentration in UK media (https://www.mediareform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/execsumFINALonline2.pdf). A 2016 YouGov survey found the UK media to be the most right-wing in Europe (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-media-is-the-most-right-wing-in-europe-yougov-finds-a6859266.html). I take on board your point about how this did not have the same effect in Scotland as it did in England but that’s surely due to the far greater & more cohesive cultural identity of Scots and the fact that Independence and Brexit are synergistically connected. The NI result was also atypical, wasn’t it, for similar reasons?
Assessed objectively the election was more interesting & complex than most other GEs, as there were many different influences at play. Yes, Corbyn got his strategy seriously wrong — even to the extent that it was a mistake to have pushed for a GE when he would’ve been better off supporting Johnson’s WA and lived to fight another day. That aside, his personal character assassination (and the shameful one of Diane Abbott) by the MSM (incl. the Gaun) & fake social media accounts was possibly the most extreme and deceitful of a major western politician in recent history – https://ukreloaded.com/release-the-hounds-who-set-the-pack-on-jeremy-corbyn.
So, are you saying that this didn’t have a major effect on the outcome because Scotland voted overwhelmingly for the SNP, which is also a progressive(-ish) party but fighting on its own territory with a very confident, polished leader?
I don’t want to get into a detailed autopsy but, as I said above, it was a complex election and the Tory’s ability to control the messaging, not least in financial terms, was surely a major contributory factor in the scale of Johnson’s victory. Disinformation on an industrial scale!
I am saying the SNP faced the same issues and overcame them
So they can’t explain Labour’s defeat
I think that an entirely reasonable conclusion from a decidedly small sample!
“ That aside, his personal character assassination (and the shameful one of Diane Abbott) “
What nonsense. If a senior public figure and member of the shadow cabinet is continuously ill prepared and ill thought out and turns up on polling day wearing 2 odd shoes then of course they will be called out..JRM and Johnson were derided when they gaffed as well. A melting ice stature was shown on national TV when he bottled the debate..as for Corbyn he had too much commie and anti nationalist baggage to ever succeed.
Richard is right. The media is biased but should not be used as an excuse to hide the serious shortcomings of the left.
I don’t believe Nicola Sturgeon – not exactly loved by the Tories either – was crucified in any way to the same extent that Corbyn was.
I do, to the extent she gave them rope
Corbyn gave a great deal more
Again, somewhat conflicted on this question: as a passionate supporter of Scottish independence, I’m more than familiar with and alert to the media bias when it comes to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP – and it stinks to high heaven. But I have to say that, even at its worst, it’s not nearly as bad as the wholesale destruction of character and reputation that Corbyn has suffered right from the start.
One factor which is not the least factor in that is that the SNP run a very disciplined ship (some say too much so) and I can scarcely think of an instance of a prominent MP or MSP publicly criticising the leadership, though I do know on the quiet that there are such reservations. Had they done so, the party machinery was aligned with the leadership (again, some say too much so), so that it would have been handled to the benefit of the party.
Compare that with Corbyn, who, right from the start, had the majority of the powerful figures in Labour openly betraying him again and again: who can forget that first PMQs, where he stood up to absolute silence from his own benches?
Likewise, the party machinery at that time was run by his political opponents, and there’s clear evidence that disciplinary procedures, especially around antisemitism, were mishandled deliberately, precisely in order to do damage to him.
Have you ever heard Sturgeon described as a threat to national security for her emphatic opposition to nuclear weapons? Has she ever been smeared as a spy, or friend of terrorists?
Now, let me be clear: in terms of leadership and ability as a debater and on-the-hoof politician, it’s clear that Sturgeon is in a different league to Corbyn – but had their roles been reversed and she had been leading the Labour Party at this time, she would not have been given a fair chance to win either, and distrust about her would have been just as powerfully stoked up and disseminated. I don’t believe the result would have been significantly different, neither do I believe it would have had Corbyn gone and another character taken over – they would have been attacked just as virulently, albeit on possibly different grounds.
One piece of evidence, albeit circumstantial, of the power the media has is the way the polls have consistently closed during the period of purdah immediately before the election. Now even within that, this election went far further than ever before in breaking that, not always blatantly, but often in its framing of the debate – so to take one example, Laura Kuennsberg talking about the political question of the day being how much the state should “interfere” in the economy. Hardly loaded at all…
Corbyn gave the opportunities and would never respond to them
Being nice is one thing
Accepting being ritually slaughtered is another
Discipline apart, again much of this was Corbyn and his teams own fault for failing to manage the flow of accusations, many of which were false
HIndsight is wonderful, but I don’t think replying to the accusations would have done him any good: look what happened to Chris Williamson when he tried it.
Very timely, but this just came up on my Facebook feed: perfectly illustrates the ‘damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn’t’ corner he was in right from the start… https://skwawkbox.org/2019/12/17/the-best-most-tragic-social-media-thread-of-the-election-aka-how-pundits-disagreed-with-themselves-to-attack-corbyn/?fbclid=IwAR17Nhg-Zf3pJ20I2-idPUigBFU9-opmgMy5wpcSxa7NQqDUJAaLif3k4ag
Chris Williamson gave everyone who wanted it all the ammunition they needed
We really need to expect better than that
And there’s the rub: Corbyn is at fault because he didn’t stand up to the allegations, Williamson is at fault because he did. An utterly no-win scenario.
No it’s not
That’s just an argument to distract attention, and you know it
The issue is don’t supply the ammunition
Well, no, he didn’t: what he did say was universally misreported, and that was all the ammunition that was needed. (It hasn’t been widely publicised, so I don’t know if you’re aware that the High Court found that the Labour Party acted unlawfully in suspending him after the initial investigation found him not guilty of the allegations made against him?)
Again, I want to be clear that I’m not saying ‘no mistakes were made, and it was all the media’ – massively far from it. But where I do disagree with you is that I think it is the single biggest issue: in my opinion, the single biggest factor in the growth of support for Scottish independence was the work of Wings Over Scotland and others: that educated us in how to ignore the mainstream narrative.
In recent times, Blair won precisely because he had the media onside, even though he’d lost a good portion of his natural support base after Iraq. Brown and Milliband lost because they didn’t gain that support. Corbyn suffered more hostility and character assassination then any previous leader, yet managed to turn round the long-standing decline in Labour’s vote. But it wasn’t enough, and might well not have been had the campaign been slick and assertive.
If we don’t learn this lesson, we’ll be in exactly the same position in five years time, bemoaning some weak spot or other that we hadn’t seen coming. The monstering whoever becomes leader will receive will be in direct proportion to the degree that their programme threatens the establishment status quo.
I accept the point on education
But Chris Williamson was a walking disaster area, and not just on the issues for which he was criticised. You cannot win elections by alienating people. Some of them believe what they’re told is right, and telling them they’re stupid does not help
Ah, this seems to have grown arms and legs which I didn’t intend. I was not posting in approval of Williamson in general: my very specific point was that the thing you cited as a failure in Corbyn – failing to stand up to the accusations against him – was the very thing which was used to destroy Williamson when he did exactly that. That’s the real power and flexibility of anti-semitism as an attack strategy: it’s primarily emotional, and thus evidence doesn’t count for much – so simply denying it is construed as an antisemitic act in itself.
And that brings another aspect of media bias which is very subtle yet powerful: when these allegations were being discussed, the only people to challenge them were Labour Party spokespeople – so it can be dismissed as self-justification and then turned round as further evidence of the very thing they were accused of. Can you imagine how different the narrative might have been if, every time a Margaret Hodge or an Ian Austin had been interviewed, they had been rigorously challenged by the interviewer with, for instance, asking Hodge to justify the way she abused the party disciplinary process by flooding it with hundreds of allegations that didn’t involve party members, or presenting them with research from the Campaign Against Anti-semitism and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research showing that, not only were Labour Party members less prone to anti-semitism than the general public, but that the prevalence of it had actually dropped since Corbyn became leader? THAT would have been the only way to deflate the false aspect of the allegations, and the fact that it never happened was no accident.
Again, there’s a parallel with Scottish independence in the oft-repeated claim that the nationalists promised that 2014 was a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event, when in truth it was never anything other than a passing remark by Alex Salmond (and quite reasonable at the time: who could have foreseen how the subsequent events would play out?) Can you imagine if that was challenged as being an untruth every time it was uttered, it would have died out long ago. Instead, the media’s silence on it allows it to live on, a lie with considerable potency.
There is no limit to the extent of the ways they can misrepresent your message without needing to resort to telling actual lies, and if we don’t figure out how to defeat that, no amount of messaging or smart policy will carry the day. The only way that won’t be used if if the policy offering is so innocuous as to represent no threat to the interests of the establishment – in which case, what exactly is the point?
All I read into all this is paranoia and defeatism
I simply suggest that we just get on with it instead of saying we’re beaten before we start which is what all who offer excuse are doing when it is simply not true
You have to decide if you want to win or not
Those offering the media excuse don’t
“You have to decide if you want to win or not
Those offering the media excuse don’t”
Really? Simply not agreeing with you = no desire to win?
Every one of my posts on this thread lays out why I think this issue is key to winning. It’s a viewpoint, is all. I don’t accuse you of lacking sincerity or desire for thinking differently, I just try and explain more clearly why I think the way I do. Please don’t be so dismissive.
I am not talking about agreeing with me or not
That’s irrelevant
I am saying stop being so bloody defeatist
It’s f***ing annoying
Stop making excuses and start developing arguments
OK, how’s about this for a strategy: next manifesto, we promise to increase privatisation, sell the NHS, reduce tax further for the top 10%, and tax children. Media’ll love it, Tories can’t beat it – and then, once we’re in power, implement the most radical programme to re-balance the economy ever. Seems fair enough, given how this one has gone…?
If you can live with the lies….
I could not
I believe the le3ft can win fairly and sqaurely
But it has got to improve its competence considerably
Interesting that Liverpool, the city that hates “The Sun”, seems to have bucked the trend of moving away from Labour.
Look, I understand what you’re saying. However unfair the media, it’s a fact and we have to win from where we are or not win at all.
But I don’t agree that talking about media bias is wholly a distraction.
Talking about media bias is not sufficient to win, but it is necessary.
We need people to be aware of the media’s bias, to be able to spot it, to notice the framing, to be sceptical of it. The greater the ability of the population to do this, the less chance the hostile media has of controlling the narrative.
Also, the Tories have successfully bullied institutions like the BBC for years through constant accusations of bias. If we don’t talk about bias, we vacate that battle field to our enemies.
Furthermore, if we stop talking about the hostile media, that immediately puts an end to any conversation about how to help and strengthen “friendly” voices in the media.
So talking about media bias is not the whole strategy, but it has to be part of it.
Talk about it by all means
But let’s not make an excuse of it
People expect politicians in power to be able to manage bigger issues than that, and rightly so
Richard – I don’t know if you chose not to run a previous comment from me (if so no worries) or whether our kitten running over the keyboard deleted it, but here’s another take.
Labour had a good story to tell: regeneration through the GND (GIR), regeneration of public services, jobs in every constituency. But told it badly by introducing a new idea/announcement every day instead of focussing on the core. The story had a gaping plot hole (Brexit) and was told without a star for their lead actor.
The purpose of the new idea every day, was to maximise the attention of a biased media. It clearly didn’t work.
Lack of clarity on Brexit meant always being on the defensive and fighting on their opponents ground. They were fulfilling expectations of politicians breaking trust. However dishonest Johnson was seen to be, he was pursuing the only thing the public had a direct vote on, so he was trusted to deliver.
Star performers don’t need to be saints, I think the public prefer them not to be so. What they do have to be is interesting and unfortunately JC is too serious to be properly interesting. People like soap operas and their favourite characters are the baddies.
This gets you and the other Remainers off the hook – and that’s your agenda – to not accept responsibility for a devastatingly stupid policy to overturn the 2016 plebiscite when Labour desperately needed those target seats to have any chance of winning. Out of all Labour’s lost seats, 52 out of 60 voted to leave the EU with many as much as 70% in favour of Brexit. Why do you reckon Tom Watson left? He knew he was going to lose his seat (68% Leave in 2016). Still, if it means we can blame Corbyn instead of you, Kier Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Paul Mason etc.. eh?
You know I am not a member of the Labour Party, and have no intention of being so?
Respectfully, you can’t blame me for anything
Except helping Corbyn become leader in the first place
There was no attempt to overturn the 2016 ‘plebiscite’ which was a referendum that was advisory and not mandatory. Had it been mandatory the electoral commission would have ruled it invalid, because of financial irregularities by the leave campaign, by the soon to be abolished supreme court. We live in a representative democracy whereby our elected politician make informed decisions on our behalf. Their efforts to accommodate the ‘wish of the people’ came up against the cold hard reality of what Brexit will mean.
The election presented the Labour Party with a paradox, support Brexit and alienate the 70 per cent of members and their supporters who wish to remain or support remain and alienate the ‘red wall’ of the north who voted tory in the belief that Brexit will be to their advantage.
Given the history of the Tories concern for the north with their lack of investment and their history of disdain for those who live on ‘Coronation Street’ they may well realise they have been sold a pup.
Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn should have resisted calls for a general election, supported a new legally binding referendum and when the result was known campaigned as the best party to deliver in the best interest of this country.
That was his mistake.
Not about the media? Someone has actually taken the time to look properly at what the MSM has said about Corbyn.
https://twitter.com/Millar_Colin/status/1201581431371247616
Up until two weeks ago I bought the i. Haven’t since as it was bought out by Rothermere, owner of the DM. There has been a change in the tone of the articles since then.
I am sure that whoever the Labour Party choose to replace Corbyn he or she will get similar treatment.
What do you think of Johnson’s threats to the BBC and Channel 4?
The BBC definitely backed him, but obviously not enough.
We can argue till the cows come home about the extent to which we blame the media. It’s not going to help.
I take it as a given that they aren’t going to help us and they will attack us at every opportunity. So go over their heads. Labour has the support of lots of “influencers” on social media. We need a full on media unit that produces lots of short sharp snappy stuff that we can swamp social media with for the next 5 years. And most importantly to set the agenda. We’ll know it’s working when the media begins to quote it. Where is the progressive Guido Fawkes.
Leaders have to draw together both wings of the party. Blair lost the left Corbyn lost the centrists. We need both. My feelings are that Starmer as leader will hold together the parliamentary party whilst giving them little to base personal attacks on, with RLB as deputy with a mandate to get around the constituencies enthusing the troops .
For a manifesto, 3 themes:
Green new deal front and centre. How we pay for it and why we can’t afford not to.
Economic justice as our second theme, picking up everything from the gig economy to tax justice.
3rd theme cutting through everything, “they lied to you”, are you going to sit there and take it or are you going to do something??
Paul Mason has suggested the following:
“A Labour weekly newspaper. It should be editorially independent, as the newspapers of other major left parties in Europe are, and demand access to the circulation system used by mainstream weeklies, and inclusion in the “tomorrow’s headlines” on TV news. It will cost millions, but with a mixture of party, donor and crowdfunding, we can combine the efforts of the many alt-media sites operating now, but begin to produce professional newsgathering operation, which can spin up into an internet radio station and a daily news website. Unless we do it, we are leaving the entire professional media scene to the right, and to liberal media platforms that can no longer be relied on to support us.”
https://www.paulmason.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/After-Corbynism-v1.2.pdf
Is it viable and sustainable? Any comments?
People would have to subscribe
Then it’s viable
I might be tempted
I might offer them a column!!!
Well, the nearest comparison would be The National in Scotland. And whilst that has been a good development, it hasn’t been successful in reaching beyond the Yes movement, largely because it’s excluded from the mainstream news media’s review of the papers (as was the Daily Mirror on occasions when they ran good news stories about Corbyn…)
Similarly, the suggestion above of an intense social media campaign simply won’t cut through to the people Labour needs to win back: the demographic groups who most largely voted for the Tories still get their news largely from ‘traditional’ sources
I think you are right RIchard.
I do wonder however if the Scots are more turned off with people like Johnson than our English counterparts (I’m a Scot living in England).
His level of arrogance, which seems to be derived from his privileged life, I suspect, puts the back up of more Scotsthan English. I have no evidence for this. I don’t think Scots could believe London voted him as mayor, we don’t suffer fools gladly.
So the uptake in Scotland to SNP could also be an anti-Johnson vote.
Another thing I’ve not seen stats on yet is whether the swing away from Labour was as big in the area of London which had Johnson as a mayor.
“I am saying the SNP faced the same issues and overcame them”
Hmmm. The singular focus of the propaganda campaign was Corbyn . Sturgeon was a mere secondary target who I noticed only got serious negative attention in the last week or so.
I’ve not seen such a relentless corporate media propaganda campaign since the the Independence referendum, where one ex BBC executive described the corporation: much as we saw in this election, as “on a war footing…” .
Now that the job is done and Corbyn is toast the eye of Sauron will doubtless turn its full powers north to deal with what Boris published as that “verminous race” …the “Scotch” who should apparently be “exterminated.” As nothing has changed in terms of the ownership and aims of the offshore billionaires who own nearly all the media, and clearly nothing has changed for the better in the BBC I expect it to be even more relentless and poisonous than last time.
If you think the media only paid attention to the SNP in the last couple of weeks you’re missing the point
Or you’re in England
The attack was ongoing and perpetual in Scotland
The audit of print media coverage during the campaign by Loughborough University shows that Labour was by far the greater focus of negative stories. As I said, our turn in Scotland will come. You’ll find them here: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/general-election/
Thanks
This, of course, is true
But it’s always been true
So Labour has to just deal with it
That’s reality
Politicians have to deal with it is my point. Moaning about reality is not much help. It certainly won’t change 2024
I’m currently reading “The Days of the Comet” by HG Wells. Published 1906. In this story the main character, a Labour supporter, is blaming the newspapers for the attacks on Labour.
It would appear that nothing has changed since then.
Perhaps the main problem the Labour party had is that they promoted a Sunday League Football Team manager to the job of World Cup Squad manager?
A man who had never shown any ambition to be anything other than what he was.
That us, a good constituency MP with no desire to be anything other than a backbench MP.
Outside of politics, in any job with a competence based promotion system, he would not have been promoted.
We apply different standards to our political “leaders” than we do to other “leaders” in our life.
Would you allow your car to be serviced by someone whose only experience was changing a wheel?
Would you let yourself have heart surgery from your GP? After all many GPs do minor operations in their surgeries.
I’ve been on the left for many years. I was a Civil Servant for 27 years, including time as a Trade union representative.
Corbyn was the equivalent of a line manager who had been in the same grade in the civil service since day one of his career, who was suddenly after decades of no interest in promotion, found himself in the top job.
I had my concerns in September 2015. My opinion of him hasn’t changed since.
He was always unelectable. Yes, the media had a part to play, but Corbyn’s fate was sealed when he said as a potential Leader of the country that he wouldn’t press “The Button”.
All MPs have a triple mandate, to act in the best interests of the whole of the country first, then that of all of their constituents, and finally of “The Party”.
Many, if not all, MPs have forgotten that.
If you are not going to carry out a role in the job, as it goes against ‘a personal belief’, why accept the job in the first place?
In a “hurdle” based recruitment system Corbyn would have fell at the first hurdle by virtue of the fact that if push came to shove, he would not have pushed the button.
I hope that the Button never gets pushed by anyone. But when one of the requirements of a job is to possibly push the Button, someone who when asked the question about pushing the Button, didn’t immediately say “YES” and later give his reasons why as an individual he wouldn’t, but as an elected Leader of the country he knew that he would push it, was never going to win the hearts, minds, and souls of the people.
Let’s be clear, no one thought he would win in 2015
The rest of the field let him in – sticking to an austerity agenda
But it was a mistake
I had the courage to say so
In respect of how it came to be that Labour fared so badly in the GE? Well, it wasn’t all down to the media. The ‘one new policy a day’ in the latter part of the campaign smacked of desperation and of a Party that was running on ideas rather than well-thought out policy (despite the substance of real merit in the manifesto). The LP’s communications strategy relied heavily on use of social media and it managed to put out some good stuff. I really don’t think though that however good their comms strategy and the story they had to tell, it would have made a blind bit of difference to the MSM. I doubt a compelling story would have been misrepresented or ignored. It wasn’t the media ‘wot done it’ for the Labour Party, it merely acted as a conduit for a range of actors to put out the highly damaging smears, slurs and allegations as to the character of Mr Corbyn, his manifest perceived failings and the threat he posed to the national security. Indeed, when one considers who might view that of paramount importance, the fog might lift a little. When a serving General in the Military is wheeled out to denounce the Leader of the Opposition; when Israel and a range of willing accomplices is proven to have been working against him; when a Ministry within our own Civil Service – MoStatecraft via the ‘Integrity Initiative’ is found to have used social media to attack JC; when Mike Pompeo states that JC must be stopped at all costs from entering No.10 it becomes clear that he was viewed as a threat to the West’s approach to, and implementation of, its foreign policy. Whoever stands for the Labour leadership had better tow the line or they will suffer just as Mr Corbyn did. If we really want to change things for the better then we should at least acknowledge what we are up against before we work out how to fight it.
Your last point is the key one
They won’t go away
It’s time to stop complaining then
Corbyn did face an all out assault from the press and also from some shady government backed organisations. What happened was at points, profoundly worrying for our democracy.
Notwithstanding all of that, Corbyn was the wrong person, delivering the wrong message, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.
Any opposition leader knows the state of play where the media is concerned.
The new leader of the Labour party needs to be someone that is strong, convincing in their arguments, persuasive of those outside of their echo chamber, and can unite the party.
The only person in the running for leader of the Labour party that can do all of the above, is Keir Starmer.
He’s certainly making the right noises in this interview: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/keir-starmer-labour-leadership-pitch-radical-government
I despair if Labour go for someone like RLB, Angela Rayner, or Jess Phillips. Labour can’t afford a nice leader now. They need someone people will believe in.
I agree
‘Corbyn did face an all out assault from the press and also from some shady government backed organisations. What happened was at points, profoundly worrying for our democracy.’
Indeed! The media are not the primary cause of a failure of the Labour Party to gain power. They simply acted as a conduit (willing or otherwise) for the smears, slurs, allegations against Jeremy Corbyn.
The lesson that I learned from this is that the leader of the Labour Party needs to espouse and uphold the West’s prevailing and appalling foreign policy. Jeremy Corbyn was too much of a pacifist and too loyal to the Palestinian cause for the deep state’s liking. If we wish to change anything for the better we should acknowledge that. If we do not, we will only ever get a Prime Minister who the deep state wants, not the one we might want in order to build a better world.
With respect, this is nonsense
I do think any candidates that divert from the Tony Blair/Hilary Benn/Yvette Cooper line on foreign policy will face a level of resistance of several magnitudes higher than those willing to toe the establishment line. Support for Palestine is probably the single biggest acid test for that.
‘With respect, this is nonsense.’
I cannot agree Richard. Unless we recognise that most elements of the media will distort, misrepresent or ignore messages and stories from the ‘left’ (unless they are delivered by those lefties of whom their ‘masters’ approve), it doesn’t matter what the narrative is, we can’t get a fair hearing. Any compelling narrative can only be ‘compelling’ if it gets airtime. Thus, we need a compelling ‘story’ and, as importantly, a means to get it out to the wider public. The behaviour of the media is important in this.
The shift to the far right in our politics is ever-more evident. The BBC as our public broadcaster has a significant responsibility to report and challenge this. It manifestly fails to do so.
https://www.medialens.org/2019/the-arrogance-of-bbc-news/?fbclid=IwAR28yZM7WUoIVLBTBwXR7mPZhPJnQQhhesN9l4AzvFwRAiqVWcn62HmPrLo
I don’t wish to subvert the purpose of this blog ‘stream’ (and what I’ve posted won’t!!) in respect of the need to look forward and prepare ourselves to think and act accordingly. I think the development of a compelling narrative is important just as much as a strategy for media management. Especially, if there is someone who challenges the mainstream as exemplified by Jeremy Corbyn.
We agree on what we need!
Let’s focus on that – because that’s what matters
Here’s just a fraction of what passes for impartial broadcasting in Scotland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xoucV99Yqo
I shall take a break from this blog for a while and come back when the dust has settled somewhat. I find it hard to stomach the dogmatic way you now dismiss nationalisation and media bias. It seems to me that you are allowing the neoliberals to frame the arguments to suit themselves. Did you really write The Courageous State?
It’s precisely because I wrote The Courageous State that I am so annoyed that labour has failed it
Neolioberal? Far from it
You’re doing that by saying nationalisation is the alternative
you’re playing their paradigm and accepting it as the norm
I don’t