on media
The media has to form the true opposition
We cannot let Starmer ignore two big issues, says Raymond Snoddy T
he general election campaign of 2024 ended as a tragicomedy for the right-wing
newspapers. It was so bad you almost started to feel sorry for them – almost. Any hope that Rishi Sunak would lead
the Conservatives to another five years in office had long been abandoned and, in the final days, the campaign was all about trying to spook disgruntled Conservative voters with the threat of ‘locking Labour in for a generation’ or letting Labour win by a landslide. Or, as former disgraced prime minister
Boris Johnson, whistling in the wind, put it in the Daily Mail: ‘Boris: Britain can still swerve Starmergeddon.’ More desperation came with Sunak warning Starmer would ‘wreck Britain in just 100 days’, while the Sunday Telegraph stoked hysteria: ‘Labour will bankrupt every generation, warns Sunak.” Just occasionally, the voice of reason seeped out from the generally Conservative-supporting Sunday Times although The Times was unable to go that far.
In a long, closely argued editorial, it
concluded that the Conservatives had forfeited the right to govern and “it is now the right time for Labour to be entrusted with restoring competence to government”. The Financial Times decided to back Labour for the first general election since 2005 and The Economist took a similar view. Rather surprisingly The Sun, which
always likes to back the winning team, held back to the last moment before a grudging recognition of reality. It was, nonetheless, very noticeable during the campaign that Starmer was given ample opportunity to set out his views
and there was no repetition of the monstering meted out to Neil Kinnock by then Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. It’s all history now – but what will
the Conservative-supporting media do when confronted with the near disintegration of the party, and what if Sir Keir Starmer does manage to return competence to government? The position of GB News will be particularly challenging. Until the election, the right-wing channel could count on cabinet ministers turning up almost daily for an easy ride, not least the prime minister himself. It’s rather doubtful that Sir Keir will very often find the time to be interviewed by GB News. And that’s before considering its
financial plight. The channel’s next accounts will almost certainly show that accumulated losses so far will have broken through the £100 million barrier. Will one of its main backers Sir Paul
Marshall, a multi-millionaire hedge fund investor, think it’s worth pouring good money after bad in the changed political and media environment? Sir Paul, an evangelical Christian, is
widely believed to be the favourite to buy the Daily Telegraph and Spectator. If he does buy the titles, the paper might retreat further into right-wing trenches rather than become a sane voice that could lead right-of-centre politics to a more rational future. There is more than a danger that papers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express will spend the next five years carping from the sidelines thereby becoming progressively irrelevant. Increasingly, political irrelevance is a dangerous business tactic given that most national newspaper print sales seem to be declining at an inexorable rate of around 10 per cent a year. Online reach may rise but the bulk of revenues
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still come from print. Printed national papers will still be around in five years. But what influence will they have in the general election campaign of 2034? There could easily come a time when it won’t be economically feasible to ship papers around the country every day. Meanwhile, the sections of the media that have been friendly or at least not overly hostile to a Labour government will face a different but still considerable challenge. The weakness of the opposition will mean that the media will have to form the true opposition and hold this government to account. While there will be obvious troubles
Given the size of the majority, Sir Keir might be tempted to ignore the party. Fairness and good governance argue otherwise
over finances despite the promise of a ‘fully costed’ manifesto, there are also two huge gaps in Labour’s policy that will eventually have to be addressed. One is proportional representation, a policy backed by the last Labour conference. Given the size of the majority at 181, Sir Keir might be tempted to ignore the party. Fairness and good governance argue otherwise. The biggest elephant in the room is Brexit. Here, Sir Keir’s vague hopes of improving trading relations with the EU while ruling out rejoining the single market or the customs union are unrealistic. With 62 per cent of the population now believing that leaving the EU was a bad idea and a majority, albeit it a bare one, wanting to rejoin, it falls to the loyal opposition in the media to expand the prime minister’s horizons. It is hard to see where the growth needed for Labour’s social mission will otherwise come from. Freedom of movement and rejoining the single market are out for this parliament but, with a little help from the more rational sections of the media, how about next time?
theJournalist | 09
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