I saw The Sun on the way in. The rightwing papers are excelling themselves in hysteria. A couple of days ago, The Sun was calling Brown a 'squatter' who needs to go. Now he has gone, it's shouting about 'chaos', 'running away' and stitch-ups, as are the other Tory papers. The Telegraph even calls it a coup!
This is the 'vast rightwing conspiracy' in full cry. They all like the First Past The Post system - until it delivers a constitutional method for the Labour Party to stay in power. Whether you voted Labour or not, the system is working. These papers are democratic, but only when it suits them. The Tories and their media friends are trying the full GW Bush election tactics: don't win, but get the juggernaut rolling anyway.
There's a roundup of the media coverage here and a picture gallery of front pages here: its viciousness and lack of concern for law and fact is horrifying.
So The Sun splash (headline: "GOING BROWN") began: "Downing Street squatter Gordon Brown finally turned his back on power last night - and left a trail of chaos behind him."
The Daily Mail called it "A SQUALID DAY FOR DEMOCRACY" and saw it as a cynical way for Labour to keep hold of power. As did the Daily Express with "THIS SHABBY STITCH-UP."
By far the best headline among the Tory-supporting press was the Daily Telegraph "A very Labour coup".
The big gun commentators at the Mail, such as Quentin Letts ("What a tarts' bazaar"), Richard Littlejohn ("a scandalous piece of party political self-interest") and Peter Oborne ("Yesterday was a revolting day for British democracy") were on fire.
Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun was also over-heated: "Gord riddance to the Scottish idiot," he wrote in a piece headlined: "THE END OF AN ERROR." Kelvin MacKenzie was generous to "psycho" Brown: "I believe he came into politics to do good. He may have failed but when he leaves he will not fill his wallet and besmirch the good name of No 10 in the manner of Tony Blair."
In case journalists have forgotten, the Tories polled 36%. The Unionists polled 1-2%, as did the BNP and UKIP (neither of which gained seats). So 60% voted for Labour, the Lib Dems, Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Plaid and the SNP. That, to me, says that Britain is liberal-left country and legitimises a liberal-left government.
It really is time to move to Norway.
4 comments:
In the interests of balance, the actual figures (from the Beeb) are:
lab: 29%, lib: 23%, SF: 0.6%, SDLP: 0.4%, Plaid: 0.6%, SNP: 1.7%, total: 55.3%.
Con: 36.1%, lib: 23%, total: 59.1%.
Just sayin'...
Thanks Adam. I stand corrected (I was guessing). The parliamentary seats still make a anti-Tory alliance possible though.
I was struck by the calculation of how many voters it takes to elect an MP. In the 30,000s for Tories and Labour, c. 119,000 for the Lib Dems and 250,000+ for the Greens…
Change is coming, thankfully. Neither the Tories nor Labour would have gotten rid of first past the post (I don't buy Labour's sudden conversion to electoral reform). Perhaps something good can come out of the hung parliament. However, it needs to go to a referendum. There are many varieties of PR, this needs to be debated and the electorate need to decide the most appropriate form.
I agree with every word of that. Except for the use of 'gotten', which hasn't been standard English since the 1400s.
Hung parliaments are good when you've got extremists in the dominant parties - as the new Tory intake is - they can't get away with their most outrageous activities. Similarly Labour will have to dump ID cards etc.
On the other hand, dubious minorities can dominate, as the UUP did in the last days of Major's government.
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