Budget narratives
Our newspapers aren't there to tell us what is happening. They're there to repeat a set of familiar stories to spark outrage, fear and anger.
Every Labour budget comes with the same narratives from certain quarters. It is, inevitably, a 'war on the middle classes' or a 'tax raid on the middle classes'. It doesn't matter if it is or not. That's what it becomes because that is the tramline the story is set to run along.
So today we have
A 'tax raid on the middle class' in the Telegraph, and
a 'stealth tax raid on the middle-classes' in the Mail.
Great minds, and all that. I'll leave it to others who are brighter than me to go through the details. Perhaps it is a tax raid on the middle class(es) this time. I don't rule that out. But all I will say is that it's the very familiarity of the story that makes me a bit suspicious. Let me give you some examples.
March 2008: 'WAR ON THE MIDDLE CLASS' said the Mail. What was the evidence?
Gordon Brown was facing a twin backlash last night over Budget plans to raises taxes on alcohol and motoring which are clearly aimed at the middle classes.
Because only the middle classes drink or drive. Obviously! You thought everyone did. But no.
March 2008: The Telegraph worries about 'a clampdown on middle class motorists' using figures from the Taxpayers Alliance. Apparently a Saab is a 'run of the mill car' for which families are being 'clobbered'.
June 2008: The Telegraph frets about how the 'middle class' are suffering most. How did they define 'middle class'? Well, they worried about the £20,000 school fees. As I'm sure we all are. It's about how you define middle class, I suppose. If you mean 'all top rate tax payers' then fine. But I don't see it that way.
January 2009: The Mail says 'Harriet Harperson' (sic) is declaring 'WAR ON THE MIDDLE CLASSES' by offering incentives to teachers to stay at less well performing schools. Incentives for teachers? WAR!
And so on, and so on. They drag up CLASS WAR every now and then - keeps it fresh, doesn't it? You never know which you'll get: will it be LABOUR'S CLASS WAR or LABOUR WAR ON MIDDLE CLASSES, or the 2010 vintage, TAX RAID ON MIDDLE CLASSES? I did see our old friend CLASS WAR as the main headline on the Mail website yesterday, so they'll keep juggling them around I guess.
Is it true? It might be. Depends on who you think these war-ravaged middle classes are. People who drive Saabs and pay £20,000-a-year school fees, who have £1million homes? Maybe I wouldn't quite say that's the entirety of the middle class, but there you are. What do I know? I'll give them this though: they're remarkably resilient, these poor folk, despite constantly being raided for taxes and having war declared on them; they just keep going. How do they do it?
PS I couldn't go without letting you have a laugh at the Express. In many ways I see my job here as facilitating people's laughing and pointing at the Express. So here you are:
They want to tax your car? Jesus. Imagine that! What will they call such a nasty tax? I imagine it'll be called something like 'vehicle excise duty' or something like that, and we'll all have to pay it. Yeah, it'll be really nasty. Luckily we don't pay that at the moment, though. Good of David Cameron to warn us.
Anyway, if Labour is taking 'revenge on Britain's hard workers' then I guess Express workers have nothing to fear, having already run the 'NOW A TAX ON HARD WORK!" rubbish back in 2008 for that Budget and simply having done the same story again. Ah well, plus ca change, as they say. They write the same stuff; I write the same stuff attacking it. My only comfort is not having to worry about the £20k-a-year school fees that middle class people do...
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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March 25th, 2010 - 01:45
If there’s one overarching theme that I take from your articles, Anton, it’s that the tabloid press are just downright fucking lazy. There’s no sense of wanting to tell the truth, or simply present the facts. No, every. single. fucking. thing has to be spun to represent the paper’s party line.
A budget is a budget. It’s not an attack on anyone, it’s just a government setting out it’s spending over the next year. So how the christ do the tabloids read so much into it?
Anyway, cheers for the articles. They keep me angry enough to not bother spending any money on that shite, and to take my news from the BBC’s website.
March 25th, 2010 - 02:01
April 23rd 2009 was my favourite from The Telegraph, “Return of Class War: High earners hit with 50p tax rate.”
March 25th, 2010 - 08:05
Is the Sun’s not infinitely worse?
http://news.sky.com/sky-news/content/StaticFile/jpg/2010/Mar/Week4/15581629.jpg
March 25th, 2010 - 09:04
I don’t understand the Express headline at all. Is there any context to the government being “spiteful” and “taking revenge”? Were the cabinet really sat around thinking “Well, we’re not going to be here in a few months. How can we actively piss off the voters?”
They’re smart people. Surely you’d be thinking “We’re not going to be here in a few months. How do we actively piss of the opposition? I know! Free puppies for all, the pop band of your choice will perform live in your living room and all Prime Minister’s Question Times will be hosted by Ant and Dec. Yeah. Let’s see how the fuckers find the money for that.”
March 25th, 2010 - 10:38
See, if you just read a few details about the goddamn budget (or think for two seconds, like Dave says) you’d understand that much of this newspaper shrieking is prepackaged rubbish designed to fit an agenda.
But it’s infuriating when you have to do your own research to guard against the misinformation peddled by the great British press, who are supposed to, um, inform us about stuff. Bastions of free speech and all that. Still, though. At least I know that they’ll go to court for the freedom to tell me all about John Terry’s affairs. At least they come through for the important stuff.
(Oh yeah, and also, it’s perversely funny to see how Darling clearly could have done *nothing* that would’ve pleased the headline writers. So the Mail basically has “Darling says that things will get better – the lying bastard” and the Telegraph complains about the lack of pre-election ‘sweeteners’ when if the budget had included said ‘sweeteners’, they probably would have moaned about Darling trying to buy the electorate with a nakedly political and unrealistic budget. I was hoping he’d promise a Mars Bar for every voter – but if he did, I wouldn’t have believed him. Bastard.)
March 25th, 2010 - 11:45
I had the marvellous experience of browsing the newspapers in M&S in Enfield – surely a more Conservative place one could not hope to find – when, as I approached the Mail an elderly gentleman put one down, sighed, turned to me and said:
“You know what? All of them are Conservatives, and they don’t understand what it’s like you know? The pain of the common man. All the stuff we have to put up with every day and they just don’t get it. You wait and see if I’m wrong – when they get in it’ll just get worse”
He’d obviously seen me looking incredulously at all the ‘spiteful’ at a glance budget facts in the Express and chuckling to myself….
March 25th, 2010 - 12:23
I’d rather take considered budget analysis from the Beano than the Daily Express.
The Daily Mirror has a somewhat different take on the class war angle – Darling as Robin Hood robbing the rich to feed the poor.
They’re all slanted one way or another and your best bet for a bit of objective reporting is radio and TV news. Which is a sad reflection on the shabby tat that masquerades as our national press.