How dare you decide for yourselves! We’ll tell you how to vote, says Mail
How dare you.
How dare you decide how to vote for yourselves. Don't you know it's the Daily Mail's job to tell you how to vote, and for you to say "Thank you very much sir" and pop into the polling booth on their instructions? What were you thinking, imagining that you might have a free choice when it came to choosing a party for the general election?
You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Today's Mail attacks Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats as fiercely as possible. You may remember from the other day, people polled by YouGov claimed they had been asked questions slanted against the Liberal Democrats, involving suspicious donations and problems with expenses. And now the Mail, entirely coincidentally I'm sure, is using exactly the same anti-Lib Dem message in its editorial:
And, because of a brilliant propaganda coup, the LibDems have painted themselves as the clean, honest party with a fresh, untarnished leader in Mr Clegg.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As this paper reveals today, Mr Clegg and many of his MPs have been some of the worst expenses offenders. LibDem donors have been tainted by criminality.
And the party that promises to return integrity to Parliament is itself stuffed to the rafters with lobbyists and ex-lobbyists like Mr Clegg, many of whom worked for firms promoting policies that are antipathetic to the LibDems' now declared beliefs.
Was the YouGov private poll a way of finding out a good message to attack Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems, which has now been passed on by the Conservatives to their favoured newspapers? Or did the Mail come to this strand of attack independently? It matters not. What matters is the level of attack at the Liberal Democrats from the Mail - today there are now nine separate pieces attacking a vote for the Lib Dems.
I think there are a few things going on here. Firstly, it's that the values of the Liberal Democrats - joining the euro, for example - run counter to the values of the Daily Mail, which has often told ghost stories about the Brussels bureaucrats who are controlling us from afar. Secondly, they may be seen by the Conservative Party as the best launchpad for an attack strategy against the Lib Dems, to try and slap Mail readers who would dare vote Lib Dem around the face and make them realise that if they do want to get rid of Gordon Brown, they must do it the Tory way.
Finally, and importantly, they will look like a bunch of mugs if they have nailed their colours to the campaign of David Cameron and the Conservative Party, and voters ignore them. The other day former Sun editor David Yelland wrote in the Guardian that power for the Lib Dems would mean Rupert Murdoch was 'locked out' of British politics - the same day, Murdoch's Sun launched a blistering attack on Nick Clegg, coincidentally enough. I dare say it's the same for the Mail.
These newspapers want to be associated with the winners, not the also-rans. They want their brands to get a little bit of stardust from being positioned next to the powerful; they don't want to be seen to have backed the wrong horse or jumped on the wrong train. People do seem to have taken David Cameron's constant message of 'voting for change', but a lot of them don't seem to be wanting change from him. That is their right, as voters in a democracy.
Newspapers who say "No, you must do what we tell you" run the risk of being exposed as being not quite as influential as they thought they were, and looking out of touch with the public, and their readers. But we'll see. A torrent of attacks on Nick Clegg might have the desired effect; it might simply give him even more credibility and present him as an even more desirable candidate. If him getting more power and influence might upset the tabloids, a lot of people might think that's a jolly good thing.
And still it amuses me to see the Mail pretending, in the midst of this concerted assault on the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg, that they're claiming they're the objective reporters, while the evil BBC are the biased ones:
Indeed, the idea is taking such strong root that the BBC, with risible lack of objectivity, has begun to refer blithely to such a scenario as a 'balanced Parliament' - a description that could not possibly be further from the truth.
That is why, with polling day barely two weeks away, the Mail urges its readers to wake up and get real: Yes, the political classes deserve our contempt, but do we really want a hung Parliament with the paralysis, indecision and political chicanery that this will involve?
A 'risible lack of objectivity'. Beautiful. Whereas the Mail's infantile mudslinging at Clegg is objective? How about their dog whistles about Nick Clegg's supposed lack of 'Britishness' the other day? Was that objective, or was that pretty sinister?
Maybe people should vote how they want to vote, and there's nothing the papers can, or should, do to try and stop them. Maybe a hung parliament wouldn't be the end of the world, and every other democracy on the planet can grow up and cope with it. Maybe by ramping up the intensity of their attacks, the old media are showing their declining power, their lack of influence, their inability to keep in touch with the public mood. But how dare we decide how to vote. How dare we.
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April 21st, 2010 - 09:19
Interesting that the Daily Mail would say that the BBC called a hung parliament a “Balanced parliament”, when the BBC were simply reporting the views of the SNP. Not that I would accuse the Daily Mail of lying through their back-teeth or anything. Not with our libel laws anyway.
April 21st, 2010 - 09:25
Good point about the papers – if the polls continue as they are, it will be interesting to see how the Sun (in particular) and Mail react. Probably with increasingly hysterical coverage, as we’ve seen over the past few days.
There was another anti-Clegg story yesterday when the Mail wrote about his expenses and the amount he had to pay back. They mentioned the same about Gordon Brown.
But they ‘forgot’ to include the amount Cameron had claimed and paid back. Funny that…
April 21st, 2010 - 10:01
Aaargh. It’s this kind of balls-out attack that worries me, because I think that many people still have enough trust for the papers to take them seriously when they’re this aggressive, and rather than thinking “Hmm. This is rather biased. I wonder why?” a lot of people are likely to be concerned by the level and amount of vitriol on display here and some of the mud will stick.
Which would be fine if it was proper, balanced criticisms of his policies, but not fine if it’s “hmm, he’s not very British, is he?” or “They’re all shadowy lobbyists! Get real! You don’t have a significant choice to make here!”
It’s just so cynical. I find it hilarious that the attack line is that Clegg is “just as dishonest” as the other parties – including, presumably, the Tories… and that “Yes, the political classes deserve our contempt” but for God’s sake let’s not vote differently as a result – because they’re all equally scummy, so we’re stuck with the same old choice. That’s the implicit basis behind these attacks.
The cynicism is just so naked. “Everything’s fucked, and they’re all scum, and Nick Clegg is EQUALLY SCUMMY, so let’s vote Tory, because…”
There is no because. They aren’t arguing we vote Tory because they have decent policies, they’re arguing we shouldn’t vote Lib Dem because they’re just as scummy as everyone else, so there’s no meaningful choice.
This is why I recoil from a conservative viewpoint – it’s the notion that the status quo is either ok or unchangeable, and we should just accept it. Add in the Mail’s typical racism and fear-mongering and it becomes completely unacceptable.
(A part of this idea that the status quo is – or should be – immutable also dismisses alternative viewpoints. So the Mail present their own view, not as biased, but as ‘common sense’ or even, maybe, objective reality (yikes!) – and the desire for anything different is crazy or impossible or biased or scary or whatever.)
Urgh.
April 21st, 2010 - 10:03
Love the quote about how the BBC has started referring to a hung parliament as a balanced parliament as, if memory serves me correctly, it was Auntie showing a clip of Alex Salmond saying a ‘balanced’ parliament would be good for Scotland that the M@!l are probably referring to.
April 21st, 2010 - 10:06
I’ve said this elsewhere but this is good, this is very good because after that first debate things have not gone to plan and the ‘most boring election ever’ pitch is falling flat and these shits are actually a little bit worried.
I just hope that come polling day, the Lib Dems haven’t peaked too early and they can have an impact at the polls.
April 21st, 2010 - 20:02
Exactly. How funny would it have been if the first two debates had been declared null and void bore draws – and Clegg got the momentum after the third and final debate – thus reducing the mud-sticking timetable.
“…these shits are actually a little bit worried.”
Isn’t it wonderful. Usually so cock-sure that the electorates public mood has been judged. Cameron has had nearly five years to grab the public imagination and has failed, it is now the responsibility of the press to destroy the popularity and curiosity the public seems to have developed for the LibDem leader.
April 21st, 2010 - 10:16
I can’t help thinking that anybody who’s picked up the Daily Mail has already made up their mind who they’re going to vote for.
April 21st, 2010 - 12:04
There are still a depressingly large number of people who don’t realise how poisonous the mail is. They live in a distorted reality.
This all-out biased offensive brings to mind American right-wing media. It’s surely a sign that the Lib Dems are finally being perceived as a genuine threat.
Well, whether the mud sticks or not, it is very exciting to see the Daily Mail and Murdoch rattled.
April 21st, 2010 - 12:25
Unfortunately too many sheep read this paper and will likely be sucked in by these articles. Have seen it time and time again.
April 21st, 2010 - 12:49
For those wondering about how much Mail readers have made their minds up / are influenced by the inane dribblings on its pages, I present a case study:
My mother in law is a retired teacher who regards herself as left wing, from a working class Dublin background, yet she reads the Mail as it’s not as overtly trashy as, say, the Sun or the Star, yet not too difficult and highbrow like the Grauniad or the Times. Regardless of the Mail’s rabid frothing at the mouth on politics, she still intends to vote Labour, and would certainly never consider voting for the Tories. Nevertheless, in that way that Mail readers seem to (my late, unmissed grandmother was one and did the following as well) she chooses to read people bits of articles from the dead-tree version as if they were gospel. More worrying, her views on immigration are sourced entirely from the Mail, at least up until the point that someone reminds her that she herself is an immigrant.
It seems there is some kind of hypnotic appeal that the Mail has on otherwise decent people. Though in this instance it may not sway a particular reader to change political allegiances, the creeping insidious the-grass-is-always-greener-for-everyone-else attitude it portrays obviously influences people to a certain degree. It’s nice to see them get in a flap about this as it does, to some extend validate the Lib Dems as a real threat, however the fact that people will be potentially influenced by their flapping is deeply worrying to me…
April 21st, 2010 - 13:40
“The other day former Sun editor David Yelland wrote in the Guardian that power for the Lib Dems would mean Rupert Murdoch was ‘locked out’ of British politics ”
his premise was that Murdoch and the media elite have ignored the LibDems because they’re powerless, so Clegg is ‘untainted’.
Yelland doesn’t mention the obvious reaction of media elite to the LibDems (or anyone else) if they got any power.
And, as naive newbies, it’s arguable that the LibDems would be more susceptible to gameplaying than the experienced parties.