The insufferable coverage of last week’s by-elections pantomime sadly reflects the barrel-scraping media state we’re in, with only this newspaper offering commentary on the current conjuncture that refuses to join the sadistic hate-fest against Jeremy Corbyn.
The media’s unprecedented assault began in earnest in autumn 2015, the Goebbels cat leaping out of the bag when “a Number 10 source” was reported in the Daily Express (August 17, 2015) as saying , “We’ve just got to set the Looney-left narrative and kill this new leader in the first month”. Unfortunately for them, Jeremy’s popularity has been such that this scurrilous month-long campaign has become a permanent feature of Britain’s media landscape, with Corbyn subjected to the most unforgivingly vicious demonisation campaign in generations. It’s actually a great compliment to Jeremy that the terrified Establishment has felt the need to subject him to such shameful demhumanising bile.
Last week’s orchestrated establishment froth was boringly predictable. Anyone with a modicum of unbiased intelligence knows that it's always a great error to generalise from local unique mid-term by-elections to the national situation; yet that’s almost invariably what the brain-dead political commentariat do.
Copeland is highly untypical, with 10,000 workers in, or allied to, the nuclear industry; with a history of rather unpleasant right-wing pro-nuke Labour MPs; and with the Tories' local campaign playing on fear – i.e. "Corbyn has a history of being anti-nuclear power, so if you vote Labour, you’ll put your own job at risk." UKIP's share of the vote also fell from 15 to just 6 per cent – signifying a big tactical shift to the Tories.
Copeland was therefore very far from being a seat from which reliable generalisations are legitimate. Yet why let fair, dispassionate journalism get in the way of another baseless pretext with which to beat Jeremy and urge his imminent demise.
Thankfully, Jeremy, John and co. are holding their nerve – as all sensible progressive opinion must do in the face of this latest tsunami of rightist hysteria that leaves Basil Fawlty looking like the Dalai Lama.
Dr Richard House
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