In the world of ‘political journalism’, the Tories are having a good week. The Prime Minister, speaking from atop a hill of banknotes supplied by millionaire donors, their sisters and their cousins and their aunts (have a good laugh at the details revealed here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-conservatives), sneers at Labour for being in the pockets of the unions.
Once upon a time, when I myself fell into the partisan trap that grips Westminster reporters, I wouldn’t have been able to write the above sentence. If you work in Westminster reporting you have to join a gang as surely as if you grow up in one of fatherless desert estates of South London. If you don’t, you may not be knifed or gunned down but you will face professional death. Contacts will not feed you stories. Newspapers will be baffled by your refusal to adopt to the standard storyline.
To explain part of this problem, a courageous and honest essay about the way in which ‘news’ gets in the way of truth, by the estimable Peter Oborne, is reproduced in my book ‘The Cameron Delusion’ , or you may read it here
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/...rs-government/
It is only part of the story. Traditionally, British newspapers have been partisan, and the more popular they are the more partisan they are. So that, even in the modern era, when the traditional Left long ago despaired of New Labour (being too thick to realise that New Labour is in fact a subtle and camouflaged fulfilment of their dreams) and the traditional right have just begun to realise that the Tory Party is not in fact conservative at all, a whiff of partisan conflict can quickly bring both sides back into line.
Thus. Theresa May’s supposed ‘triumph’ in ‘securing’ the deportation of Abu Qatada (whose lawyer announced in May that he would go voluntarily as soon as Jordan had complied with the ECHR ruling, and who arrived at Amman with a whopping great grin on his bearded visage) the attack on Mr Miliband for his union funds, which seemed to me to turn a bit sour on Mr Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions this week, and may well end in that horror of all horrors, state funding for political parties) and the laughable Tories-only vote for a ‘jam-tomorrow’ referendum on the EU , four years hence, are cited as reasons why the Tories have a ‘spring in their step’, in newspapers and of course on the BBC.
And then the decision by the European Human Rights Court to allow some heinous murders to petition for release before death is another opportunity for the Tories to rage against ‘Human Rights’ and ‘foreign courts’, as if they didn’t like them. Actually they do, but they also rejoice in the excuse they provide for enacting laws they know will be unpopular. It’s all the fault of those foreign judges! They made us do it! (Don’t mention the fact that we could, in a matter of minutes, end their jurisdiction over us) NB, Mrs May also this week agreed to place us back under the jurisdiction of the European Arrest Warrant, ultimately guaranteed by the other European Court, the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, an oppressive loss of sovereignty which means no British subject( as we are no longer) is safe from arrests ordered by foreign magistrates. This announcement, in one of those lovely coincidences that make our political system such fun, was made on the same day of the Strasbourg judgement on murderers serving whole-life sentences.
The reason for this partisan, thoughtless stuff, in which bogeymen are slain and straw men hacked to pieces, is that the Tories’ right flank is crumbling , and that Mr Cameron and his press friends hope to shore it up by appealing to tribal instincts and blowing hard on every dog whistle that comes to hand. The depth of the Tory crisis is great. Small and non-prominent mention of the following survey could be found by assiduous readers of the press or listeners to the BBC. But because it wasn’t commissioned or spun by any party or newspaper, it was little-noticed.
It is a very large survey of Tory Party members conducted by some highly reputable academics. Its principal revelations are that 42% of those members think their leaders do not respect them very much, that fewer than one in five believe their party can win the next election, and that a large number of Tory
*members* are actively considering voting for UKIP at a general election. You can find the whole thing here :
http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/07/08/...her-gloomy-pi/
The important thing to bear in mind here is that these rare actual party members, not voters. The very core of the Tory party’s supporters is seething with mutiny and mistrust. Are these people going to be convinced by Mr Cameron’s Doomsday referendum of Mrs May’s skilfully spun fake toughness? They’re certainly meant to be, and I suppose it’s possible, but I suspect not. On the old principle ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ these tough, excessively loyal old buzzards have had about enough of being strung along and they now know exactly where and how to take revenge. Watch out for the Euro elections. But the body of men and women known to Kenneth Clarke as ‘Her Majesty’s Press’ simply has yet to adapt to this new world.
