Friday, April 23, 2010

Why the right-wing smear machine will backfire

The British people are more intelligent and independent than the country's press barons and their spoilt kids seem to think.

"Nick Clegg's loony plan". "Nick Clegg hasn't a clue". "[H]is policy as pure folly". "[Clegg is] faltering". And this is just a single rickety piece in today's Sun.

We already saw what the Daily Mail are capable of. The last 48 hours have seen a parody-like, unprecedented number of outright lies, smears and hatchet jobs aiming at nothing but the pure destruction of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats (click here and here for a light-hearted idea).

Clegg has been accused of everything under the sun: he stole public money and he's pro-Nazi Germany; he's a Brussels stooge and he flies business class; he's a liar and a cheat; he's not truly British and he's pro-paedophiles; he wants all prisoners to roam free and he's anti-God; he's elitist and a snob and, in case you didn't know, he also has a foreign wife, which is very very bad.

Another couple of days and the right-wing press will make him look like Fred West if he'd embraced satanism.

Remember that, in Britain, the right-wing press have the lion's share of daily publications. Together, the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Express, the Daily Star (aka Hairy Palm) and the Telegraph constitute a staggering grandtotal of over 7 million copies circulating every day. Add the Murdoch-owned (but at least slightly more balanced) Times, and that's another half a million copies with their weight firmly behind the Tories.

The remaining bit consists of the pro-Labour Mirror (1.2m copies- but it hasn't been nice to Nick Clegg either) and, finally, the Guardian and the Independent (both fairly neutral towards the Lib Dems), whose combined circulation is 1/6 (one sixth) of the Sun alone.

Anyone with half a brain would see that the anti-Nick Clegg hysteria is a brutal, massive-scale operation to stunt the development of a level playing field campaign.

Here is a party tallying anything between 25% and 30% of the popular vote which is fighting an election without a single friendly newspaper on their side and with most of the others out in force to literally destroy them and bully them out of a positive electoral outcome.

It emerged this morning that the Sun censored an opinion poll showing that "if people thought Mr Clegg's party had a significant chance of winning the election, it would win 49 per cent of the votes", way ahead of the other two.

That's what people think. But the Sun doesn't want you to read about it. The Sun wants to ram down your throat the notion that Nick Clegg is a conniving/evil/loony piece of shit. Anything that threatens the status quo must be torn to pieces.

However, the good news is that the British people are more intelligent than the country's multi-millionaire press barons and their spoilt kids seem to think.

People are clearly fed-up with the rotting two-party straighjacket.

Not only that. The British love an underdog and chances are this industrial-scale assault against the newest party will backfire tremendously. And it will be a fine day when we see the Sun and Rupert Murdoch's spoilt little rich kid licking the unexpected winner's arse.

It won't cost them much: they lost their dignity a long time ago.

5 comments:

roym said...

oh how i really hope this comes true. Its really now or never for electoral reform

Anita said...

Excellent article. And I do hope your final paragraph comes true.

Newmania said...

How many people do you think would register supprt for a Lib Lab pact ?

.. thats right bugger all and yet is what we may well get and as for smears the Labour leaflet campaign has hit what I wish I could call a new low

Sadly its an old low but I have an idea , the Conservative Manifesto does not rule out eating babies . That must be a secret plan then...
I`d say that the anti Pole Crewe by election has a prominent place in the anals of shame . What your favourite New Labour shit bag lie ...?

Want some suggestions ? Got plenty

Stan Moss said...

Newmania,
I see that like a shunned lover, you just can't stay away from us.

To the point, you'll find that opinion polls show a more favourable approach to a Lib Lab pact that any coalition involving the Conservatives.

I also register that you don't find the tabloids' smear campaign wrong in the slightest.

It's quite telling.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Both Newmania and alleged patriot have to return here because they only exist in opposition and their idiotic views, fringe at best, have no chance of becoming reality unless they expound them at places where they are not at all welcome.

Pity the bastards.