Regrets, I’ve had a few
...and so has Ukip's Glenn Tingle, whom we met yesterday as he charmingly described Afghans as 'backwards tribal wankers' and said that Iran should be 'blown up'.
I said at the time that his rather bizarre answers to questions had provoked barely a flutter of interest - well now...
the BBC has covered the story here. And is Mr Tingle suitably ashamed of his disgraceful response to the questions? Well the remarks were 'regretted' but...
UKIP said that Mr Tingle "regrets any offence he has caused through using such intemperate language".
"As an ex-serviceman himself, Mr Tingle is very passionate about matters relating to British service personnel and their safety," said the statement.
"In this instance, he has allowed his passion to get the better of good taste in terms of the language and black humour he has displayed."
He's not exactly denying the comments though, merely expressing regret that other people actually got to read them and might have been annoyed by the language. Is it worse to call Afghans backwards or wankers? Apparently, it's only the swear that's the big deal.
Look, I know we all say silly things from time to time - wishing death on others, hoping Richard Littlejohn gets run over by a train, and so on - and there's certainly a case to be made for us to have more colourful and outspoken candidates in our political life, as I've made previously during this campaign. And it's not a million miles away from Kenny Everett with the giant foam hands telling a Conservative Party conference to bomb Russia and kick Michael Foot's walking stick away. (I don't think Everett was trying to answer a genuine political survey at the time, though.)
But can you imagine the uproar if anyone from a major party had said this kind of thing? We don't have to imagine the uproar if a maverick Labour candidate in an unwinnable seat said something off-message - it was there right across every medium yesterday. Ukip just regrets being found out.
2 days left: Too subtle up till now
As David Cameron dashes around our septic isle in one last push for votes, he'll be delighted if one of his skivvies brings in a few newspapers for him to read. Up until now, the papers have all been pushing him and his agenda, but they've been just that little bit too subtle. Headlines such as "DAVID CAMERWON" or "CAM THE MAN" or "YES WE CAM" or "DAVID CAMERON IS ACTUALLY THE BLOODY MESSIAH"* might have led readers to think that their paper of choice might have backed the Conservative Party, but apparently that wasn't enough. So today's leave us in no doubt at all.
The Telegraph are, with others, going for the 'bandwagon effect' - the idea that if you present someone as a winner, or the winner-in-waiting, people will want to pile on to associate themselves with success and victory, to pick fleas out of the silverback's fur. Their endorsement is inside, but we've seen this kind of thing throughout the election - presenting the Tory win as a likelihood if not an inevitability, but constantly pushing the idea of a victory. You can see that pretty clearly in this kind of thing:
where the 'Tory win' is taken for granted, and Cameron is presented as the fit, athletic, dynamic personality that he's desperately trying to portray himself as as I write this with his 36-hour publicity stunt so he can avoid tough questions from Radio 5 listeners and Channel 4 News brilliant campaigning marathon that shows what a good egg he really is. Is it coincidence that the Tory presentation dovetails so nicely with the Telegraph's? I don't really think so.
But then that's the most subtle example today. The others have thrown it right out of the window.
I'm pretty sure the Express has used almost exactly this front page before. Let me have a look... ah yes.
So now it's just a question of reinforcement. The Express has told you again, and again, and again, and now it wants you to know that it's telling you the same thing again. While the Telegraph just gives you a wink and a nudge, and points you in what it thinks is the right direction, the Express doesn't trust you. It needs to shout at you and order you to do the right thing; it needs to tell you that Britain needs to be SAVED and that only THIS MAN WITH THE BIG FACE can do it. And it needs to tell you again and again.
The Mail are even less subtle, mind.
Vote DECISIVELY. As if we go into the polling booth and put half a cross because we're not sure. Again, it's that didactic attitude. Readers are juveniles and need to be told what to do IN CAPITAL LETTERS because otherwise they'll just do something stupid like think for themselves, and that would never do. If you don't do what we tell you, Britannia herself will WALK OFF A CLIFF and we're all DOOMED. It's classic Mail territory, but it takes something to be even less subtle than the Express. At least they assumed that their readers might understand 'save Britain' - the Mail has to draw you a picture because it thinks you're too fucking stupid to get even a blunt instrument in the face like that.
I'll do more on the Sun later, because it's dredged up one of its hoariest old chestnuts today, but for now, here's their celebrity endorsement. Sun supremo Rebekah Brookes's ex-husband Ross Kemp was on telly the other night promoting Labour - another one of the awful celeb attachments we've seen during this campaign, which have added nothing and persuaded me of nothing - so today they've wheeled out their own national treasure: Simon Cowell.
I don't know about you, but Simon Cowell wouldn't convince me to do anything. Here's a man who's been on a one-man mission to destroy popular music and turn it into McDonald's; here's a preening fake-toothed smarmer in an overly tight t-shirt manipulating people on TV every Saturday night for the forseeable future. Do I want the creator of Robson & Jerome telling me how to vote? Maybe I'm wrong though, and maybe he's hugely admired and loved by everyone in Britain - maybe Ross Kemp is equally seen as not "that spamheaded bloke off the telly who goes around pretending he's a soldier" but a dignified and respected figure. Maybe I've got this whole thing wrong.
Anyway, it's not just the right-wing papers who've abandoned all subtlety in these final hours, as you can see from the Indy
and the Mirror
It's getting less and less subtle.
There's a myth going around at the moment that goes like this: "We were all told this campaign would be won on the internet, but actually it's the mainstream media who are shining." Which is drivel. No-one seriously said this campaign would be won on the web, and if they did, they were insane; this is the first campaign where social media and the web have played a significant minor role, but no-one ever thought it would be the web wot won it. And besides, while the leaders' debates have been a touchstone for the campaign, they've only served to make the dead-tree papers even more obsolete, reduced to a level of telling you that what you saw wasn't what you saw and looking more ridiculous than ever.
No, this isn't the election where the MSM bravely fought off the internet and proved they'd be around forever. It's considerably more complicated than that, and probably for another time to analyse. But what you can say is that for the next day or two, our dead-tree inky friends are more shrill, more obvious and more blunt than they ever have been. They're telling us what to think and how to vote. It's come to that point - and we should bear it in mind in a few weeks' time, when all this is over, and they go back to pretending they don't have agendas, and they're just there to report the facts, and they're asking for our trust. Let's not forget days like this.
* Not all of these are exactly true.
The search for a banana skin
Armando Iannucci in today's Independent:
The journalist from Sky News was in some kind of hysterical state of tumescence as he cackled "Gordon Brown's done a gaffe and we wondered if you'd come on to respond. You've got to see it!" on my answering service, and I'm sorry I deleted it rather than release it in to the public domain. The BBC was no less sensationalist in its pokey recording of Brown sitting listening to his own surreptitiously recorded voice played back to him.
Our election-weary friends in the mainstream media have been looking for banana skins and gaffes since day one of the campaign - looking so hard that even something like calling a bigot a bigot is suddenly a 'gaffe', because it was caught on a microphone, because it was a mistake, because it wasn't intended for broadcast, because it revealed something off-message. Iannucci calls the media 'shrieking gibbons' but I prefer the idea of slobbering jackals feasting on roadkill. It's pack behaviour and doesn't tell us anything about what's really going on.
But election reporters are like football fourth officials: they're constantly watching the technical area to see if a manager steps out for half a second, most of the time bored out of their brains while nothing happens; but if they do step over the white line, suddenly they've got all the power in the world - suddenly it's their moment to shine. Look! Look! Someone did a silly! I saw it! I did my job! Look! Look at me!
Today's Bigotgate could be the story of Manish Sood, who told his local paper that Gordon Brown was the worst Prime Minister ever. It's clearly off message for a candidate, and he's also a British Asian complaining about immigration, which I imagine will have set the fireworks off in certain newsrooms in London when they read that bit. The story has 'legs'. It's part of the reason why the mainstream say they haven't been giving the Philippa Stroud story the coverage that some of us might think it's deserved.
Whereas Philippa Stroud was a candidate allegedly doing stuff years ago - shocking and horrifying though it is - it's not someone saying it now. It lacks the 'election week banana skin' credentials, so apparently it's not as much of a story. Now I may disagree with that and you may, but we won't be seeing TV crews hastily rushing to outside Stroud's door to interview her; whereas I imagine half of Fleet Street is tearing over to Norfolk to speak to Manish Sood. The gaffe is the story - they've found another one at last! And a Labour one as well, which helps. Would it be the same if a Tory candidate came out and said David Cameron was the worst Tory leader ever? I doubt it. Does that mean Labour are more disorganised, or less tightly controlled? Or is it just some candidate with no chance of being elected coming out with something controversial? Is it really a story? Apparently it is:
However, on the TheyWorkForYou site are views from one candidate, coincidentally also in the same part of the world as the 'Labour man', that seem to have escaped attention - it's not a Labour candidate so maybe it's not so much of a story. But, well, see for yourself:
You want more?
That's not news though. Call Afghans 'backwards tribal wankers' and you can comfortably escape any scrutiny at all; call Gordon Brown the worst Prime Minister ever and you can expect a visit from 500 TV vans to your house in the next half-an-hour. It's the desperate search for a gaffe and something that's a mistake; maybe we expect Ukip candidates to be bigoted, so it's not a surprise, whereas we expect New Labour candidates to be on message, so it is something out of the ordinary. Whatever it is, it's interesting to see what does get covered and what doesn't.
This is the news
I find it funny that political parties, when attempting a verisimilitude of objectivity, dress their campaign materials up to look like newspapers. It's as if they're stuck in some previous era, when newspapers were regarded as some kind of reliable bringers of news and information, rather than the yelling parodies of partisanship and self-interest we know and love them as. "How do we get the public to trust our message? I know, we'll make ourselves look like those paragons of professionalism, the much-loved British press!"
This, for example, plopped onto my doormat (at least it would have done, had the cat not pissed on the doormat the other day in what I regard as a protest about the quality of election literature) this afternoon:
See how the top bit is made out to look a bit like a newspaper? And it's printed on cheapo Bronco paper as well, just like our inky friends in Fleet Street. But there the similarities end, because at least this bit of Tory trumpet-blowing coughs up where it's coming from right at the very start:
There you are, a picture of David Cameron and a clear message that it's from the Tories. In a way, then, I find this kind of thing, repulsive and awful as its contents may be to me, refreshingly honest. Sure, they may be calling their pretend newspaper 'News' and they might be printing it on newsprint and giving it a newspaper-style title to make you think it might be one of those crappy free papers whose only purpose is to be transported from letterbox to recycling bin with stories about craft fairs and coffee mornings; but at least they're nailing their colours to the masthead.
At least they aren't pretending, like our national newspapers, that they're just reporting the facts, or claiming some kind of investigative, journalistic approach, or saying that they are in any way independent. I kind of like that. It is what it is. It's dressed up like a newspaper, but since we know newspapers are a biased load of old cock, we enter into the spirit of things, and see through it straight away.
And when this newspaper talks about immigration
as if it really is one of the most important issues that matters to me (it isn't), at least they're honest about where they're coming from, rather than cobbling together a load of rubbish about housing queues, immigrants getting free cars, East Europeans eating swans, and so on. They just tell you what they want to do:
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with it at all. But there seems something more honest and open about this Conservative fake newspaper than there is in a lot of the real newspapers you see. Having said all of which, the back cover has some scaremongering that's truly worthy of the screamsheets - and perhaps this is the scene of the Tories' final push.
Having failed to scare everyone about Nick Clegg (though as Ben Goldacre notes, smears are often more effective than corrections), and having failed to scare everyone about Gordon Brown attacking a defenceless 62-year-old bigot nice lady while on the campaign trail, they're moving on to fear of a hung parliament. I think it's a possibly fruitful avenue for them because not everyone can remember the last hung parliament, and it wasn't the most successful endeavour in the history of British politics anyway. So it's ripe territory for sprinkling the scare seeds.
But then there's something else I notice coming through on this page of the leaflet; there's a shrillness to the tone, a "You will sit back and take the medicine because we know what's good for you" kind of attitude. Apparently, I have all kinds of delightful idealistic dreams about a hung parliament, and I need some sense knocking into me. There's a whiff of being scolded again, just as I recall from the Mail's angry attitude towards its readers when some of them dared look the wrong way the other week.
And I think I know why that is. The fear isn't coming from us. It's coming from these people. They're the ones who are really scared; they're the ones who would have the most to lose in a hung parliament - the Tories, having spent Lord Ashcroft's millions on the 'Vote for Change' signs that litter the countryside, on the billboards and the leaflets like this, can't bear the thought of not getting the result they are entitled to; their friends in the press can't bear the thought of not getting the power they are entitled to. It's fear all right, but not amongst us - they're worried about not getting what they think they deserve.
I just wonder how many people will look at that leaflet, and treat it as a source of news, or as just another source of propaganda, as they would treat any daily newspaper, those toxic brands that people are turning away from in their thousands. And I wonder how deeply the messages about fear penetrate, when it's not us who should be afraid. But we'll see. Maybe Thursday night is the time for fear to really start.
Back home
I was on holiday last week, in a marvellous place which had no mobile phone reception, no internet and not a tremendously good TV signal. It was like a holiday from the election, and it was great. I want to be there now, as you can imagine, but sadly work has intervened. Anyway, I avoided the dead-tree press, too, keeping my eyes firmly away from the news-stands while I was away.
Unfortunately I caught a glimpse of the Sun's front page in motorway services on the way home - it was like staring directly at Satan's unwiped anal ring after a particularly painful evacuation - but apart from that, I managed to avoid it all.
So in many ways, it was election-time detox. I recommend it. Next time you're overwhelmed by it all, just get the hell out. Force yourself to do it. Smash up your communication devices, and embrace the outside world. Maybe get a bit of cabin fever, and start worshipping the oven gloves as if they're possessed by the magical tree monster (which they are, I insist). Just stay away from the media pollution. It's such a lovelier world without it.
And I've voted. Popped my little slips of paper into the post, and away they've gone, into the ether, to be counted, whether they actually count or not. And that's a relief, too. It's yet another way of bodyswerving the advancing election Godzilla and scampering away to freedom. I'm terribly sorry, you can tell everyone you meet, I've voted already. It's in the post. I'm immune to everything now. I don't have to watch party political broadcasts. I don't need my newspaper to tell me what to do with my X. I don't need anyone to try and sway me, one way or the other. It's done, gone, voted, finished. Phew. And indeed, hooray.
One thing I missed - not that it would have changed my mind - was Bigotgate, as I fear it's going to be called. I needn't write anything much about this, other than to point you in the direction of these fine writers here; but even by the low standards by which we need to judge the media in this country, the coverage that I've since read of it is simply bizarre, a whole universe away from what really happened. It's the whole kind of victim mentality that the likes of the BNP (whom I will bring up, though I'm not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that you need to be a BNP member to be a bigot) wants to cultivate - the idea of the disenfranchised, the people shut out by politicians, the people who aren't being listened to. It strikes a chord because the vast majority of us are disenfranchised, shut out by politicians and aren't listened to - but not because we dare mention 'immigration'. We're just shut out anyway.
But then, just as immigrants make convenient whipping boys when it comes to blaming problems on them rather than the real reasons why people can't get jobs, houses, enough money or whatever, it's easy to blame Gordon Brown. Blame him for calling someone he thought was bigoted bigoted; blame him for being unguarded in public, rather than keeping what he really thinks to himself out of the range of microphones. Blame him for saying what he thought. Blame him for whatever you like - and he will be, by the Labour vultures keen to try and feast on the corpse of the party in a few days' time and magic away all the problems as being the fault of the scapegoat, rather than anything else. Was it really him who turned the election? Of course not. Was one slip of the tongue really such a turning point? No, but our media need stories to tell. It's easier to explain away Labour's woes in terms of one man making a silly rather than several thousand people deciding the policies weren't attractive enough over a long period of time; so, as they always do, they do the easy thing, rather than the hard thing.
I'd have preferred it if Gordon Brown had not said he was 'mortified' or gone around to the house of the 'woman who dared speak the truth'. But in a sense that's New Labour all over. You think someone's a bigot, but it makes you look bad if you think that, so you pretend it was all a big mistake. Why not just say "Yes, I thought she was bigoted, and I still think it" - would that really be so awful? Apparently so. Try and make yourselves look good, even if it's not what you really feel. It's why people don't trust politicians.
But as I say, I've voted. The media didn't change my mind, and a week of detox was just the ticket. For those of you poor souls who haven't put your Xs down yet, you've got days of this to come before you can do anything about any of it, before you get handed the little slip of paper and the pencil that mean you actually get a chance to say what you think, for once. And no-one's going to be in that booth with you, just you. They can't get you in there. Hopefully, they haven't got you already.
Hope v fear (& hiatus)
At the start of the election, the Telegraph said this:
At the time, I thought they were wrong; now I'm not so sure. For this election really does appear to be about hope and fear - though the messages of hope and the messages of fear aren't coming from the places that the Telegraph said they were. They said it was the Tories who were all about positivity and hope, and New Labour who were all about fear. Now the fear seems to be coming at us from everywhere.
Narratives of fear are something that tabloid newspapers do very well of course - though at a price. We are told to fear by them every day - about cancer, about immigration, about our children going online, about Muslims, about paedophiles, about political correctness... all those dangers out there. The nine-bin nightmare, for Christ's sake. A nightmare about nine bins! Have you ever woken up in a cold sweat, terrified by the thought of nine wheelie bins sitting in your driveway like ecological plastic Daleks? No...? Of course you haven't. You've got worse things to worry about than recycling. And that's kind of why these fear messages are less and less effective. You read these terrifying things every day, about how you're going to get cancer from this, that and the other; how Muslims are going to take over British culture; how your children are going to be robbed from you by Facebook, and so on... but of course none of these things ever actually happens. You're being told to be scared, and you may well be, but the truth is that no matter how scared you are, reality doesn't live up to those scare stories.
So when your newspaper of choice tells you that you should be scared of the Liberal Democrats, or a hung parliament, or proportional representation, or the Tories not being in power, how scared are you? Are you as scared as when they tell you that if you do/don't eat X it will/won't give you cancer? Are you as horrified as when they tell you to have nightmares about recycling bins? Are you as frightened as when they tell you that political correctness means you can't be racist any more? They've tried to make you scared so many times - pretty much every day, in fact - so how much more scary can any of these things be?
A bit of cold weather was set to kill 60,000 people back in January, according to the Express - except that never happened.
The HPV jab was 'as deadly as the cancer', said the Express. Except we now know that isn't true at all - and it wasn't even true at the time that anyone had said that.
And has your lawn been banned? No, mine neither. Overgrown by dandelions? Sure. But banned? Nope.
So why choose to believe this?
When you've been sold a pup so many times before, I think it's stretching the truth to think that people will put their faith into the tabloid front pages come election time. And while it's easy to pick on the Express, as they're the most transparently awful example of the tabloid press, they're not exactly a whole planet lower than the rest of them. The others are doing the same - pumping out the same fear messages: fear of a hung parliament, fear of people voting how they want to vote, fear of their chosen candidates not falling over the finishing line before all the others.
It's all about fear. Even when you're not being told to fear one thing, you're being told you should vote one way for fear of the person you don't want getting in. You see bar charts in your election leaflets from the three major parties telling you that certain rivals 'can't possibly win here', even when that's not quite the truth. Don't vote for them, they say; vote for the people who can win. Why waste your vote voting for who you want to win? Vote out of fear of the people you fear most, not out of conviction. It's so relentlessly negative, it's depressing. I'll vote for who I want to vote for, and that's that. I'm fed up with being told to be tactical, or to vote out of fear. I'll vote out of hope, I think; I've heard too much fear already from everyone else. If I had no hope, then I wouldn't be voting at all.
And so the attacks will be refocussed this week by the tabloids. I'm going to miss it all, because I've chosen a delightfully good week to be on holiday. I'm not disappointed. There won't be any newspapers; there will be no internet, and not very much TV, I hope. Jealous? You should be. We'll see more attacks, more pressing of the fear button. Don't do this if you don't want that to happen, they'll say. Don't do what you want, because then the thing you fear most might happen, they'll tell you. Don't do what you want - let us put that X in the box for you, they'll suggest.
But their powers are fading. They're not gone altogether, and the power of the internet is not so great that it completely dilutes the value of the front pages of newspapers... but then they have done their best to discredit themselves, without even being held up to scrutiny. Just as people don't trust politicians, they don't trust the people who tell us stories about politicians, either. And I find that reassuring. The messages of fear will keep on coming, because everyone has something to fear. The newspapers fear not being influential, or at the very least being seen to be influential, which is possibly just as important; if they've backed the wrong horse, they'll end up looking very foolish. But then, why did they have to go and choose a horse to back at all? They did it to themselves, and it's hard to rouse any sympathy.
By the time I come back, of course, it could all have changed. Doubtless you'll have been told that David Cameron had a brilliant comeback in the third televised debate; the headlines have probably already been written and are just waiting for Thursday to come and go before they can be printed. You'll have been told that the Conservative Party is the only option. You'll have been told to fear everything else. Fear, fear, fear. But are you afraid? That's the question.
The hangover
Yesterday it was me who was hung over - a few too many beers while avoiding the election debate (and the 'arseoisie') while on a night out in Bristol. But a look at today's front pages makes me think it's our friends in the inky press who are hung over. The stories are lame, unappetising, bland. Dry white toast news. They overdid it a bit the other day in the Get Clegg frenzy, and now the dead-tree screamsheets are licking their wounds, nursing a headache and feeling pretty sorry for themselves.
So much has been said already about the astonishing events of Thursday. But read Tabloid Watch for a good summary, and this article by Kevin Marsh from the BBC College of Journalism, who compares and contrasts the tabloid frenzy with the built-in fairness rules of broadcast:
I am writing this after reading most of this morning's election press online and while watching party news conferences and interviews on live and continuous TV - I cannot reconcile the two.
They are glimpses of different universes.
I think the problem, the terrifying problem for the dead-tree press and the 'Murdochracy', is that this election has been electrified by the television debates in a way that no-one could see coming; the expectations were that smooth operator David Cameron would blow everyone away, but it hasn't quite worked out like that. So now the press are reduced to trying to tell you that what you saw on television wasn't what you saw: yesterday David Cameron's cheerleaders on the news-stands claimed he had clearly won the second debate, despite viewers not seeing it that way. Who do I believe, my own eyes, or what someone else is telling me I saw with my own eyes? Newspapers have been reduced to someone standing in front of you while you're watching a film or a football match, telling you what to think about it; all you want to do is shoo them out of the way - you can see for yourself.
Today, then, in the wake of all that, and seeing that a four-pronged attack on the Lib Dem leader failed to produce a significant dent to his popularity, the papers have crawled back into their kennels. The Daily Mail has written so much about Lib Dems recently that even their own readers are starting to wonder if he's the messiah; today they go back to an old classic, and a time-honoured bogeyman: the wheelie bin.
There is a 'Cameron in surge past Clegg' attempt on the right-hand side*, but largely this front page is about bins. Let's get panicked about teh evilz of recycling, and it's a shoddy shambles of a campaign that they've been cranking on about for an awfully long time (see 'Bin there done that', 'Oh fucking grow up' and 'It's wheelie bin a shit campaign' for the backstory). You could be forgiven for thinking, as this blogger did, that there are more important issues in the world than wheelie bins, but not if you're the Mail. When in doubt, go for the bins! If making Clegg the bogeyman didn't work, then bring back one you know and love: the horrors of having to sort out your rubbish and wheel bins out to the kerb! Wasn't it better when we had massive dustbins to lug around, or you could just chuck your bin bags all over the place and get them ripped up by foxes? Those were the days!
And, yet again, from the newspaper which criticised Clegg (in 2002) for saying that the British had some kind of obsession with the Second World War, is a massive advertisement for a Second World War 13-DVD set. Obsessed much?
The Telegraph, while talking about the election, is much more sombre.
Though it still can't resist a bit of a scare story about how a hung parliament will cost 'you' £5,000 (it won't, you'll be utterly unsurprised to hear). It's very downbeat though, almost waving the white flag for their chosen candidates. That massive front page the other day about a rather unexciting expenses story on Clegg which had been blown up and puffed up well beyond what it actually was seems such a long time ago already. This is more gloomy, reflective, still trying to scare you away from a Conservative overall majority, of course, but starting to wonder if that's really going to happen, preparing themselves and their readers for the possibility of Tory defeat, or at the very least a lack of Tory convincing success. Which for me makes the 'relax... it's going to be a beautiful day' all the more delightful a juxtaposition. But that is a long, long way away and I am sure that a lot of things may change.
The Express, meanwhile, have abandoned politics altogether and have gone for the ashpocalypse.
The trouble is, what are readers going to think about that front-page headline? Are they going to think: "Yesterday you told me that David Cameron had won the TV debate, when most people I'm talking to, even among Conservative Party supporters, think he didn't win it. So why am I meant to believe this stuff today?" - or are we meant to think that Express readers are credulous ninnies thinking "Oh, OK Mr Express, whatever you say!" - who knows.
The Sun, meanwhile, has turned its fire from Lib Dem to Labour. Having failed to sink the Clegg battleship, they're now trying to blow Gordon Brown out of the water. Oh, the irony, the irony, of the DON'T STOP DECEIVIN' headline, on the Sun of all places; the double irony of attacking someone else for printing lies; the triple irony of attacking someone for saying that printing lies is OK. Maybe it isn't a headline at all, but the Sun sub-editors misunderstood the memo they'd been sent.
It's the Mirror I feel for most in all of this really. They've had to try and convince their readers that Gordon Brown has been performing best in the TV debates, when even the staunchest of Labour supporters must have suspected that wasn't really the case. They've also got to try and reconcile the fact that their chosen candidate is being abandoned by many people on the political left for someone else. No wonder they can't be bothered to keep that pantomime going this weekend, preferring instead to tell you that, in a television programme, something will happen, and it will be on TV. Thank goodness for that exclusive! Of course, they could well be judging - accurately perhaps - that many readers are fed up with the election now, and simply want the vote to happen as soon as possible. Even so, you could have hoped there might have been some kind of news-style story to present, instead of a "Wuurghgghh, telly" effort. No...? No, apparently not. Sigh.
So are they running out of steam, or are we? Have they decided that we've made up our minds and there's no point in trying to influence us any more? Or are they redoubling their efforts for fresh salvoes to be launched in the direction of their opponents next week? I would imagine it's probably the latter - but the good news is I'm on holiday next week, and I intend to have no contact with newspapers, or television, or anything. Which makes me very lucky, and means you're going to have to suffer, I'm afraid.
* I don't think they're referring to the poll on their website which was pulled down when it showed Nick Clegg winning, then reinstated with a sudden and mysterious lead for David Cameron, but you never know.
Cleggicide special
At the last general election, the Liberal Democrats pursued a strategy of 'decapitation' against the Tories. It failed. Now it's the Lib Dems who are under attack from those who would seek to decapitate their hopes by killing off their leader's credibility; however, this time it isn't their political rivals in the main who are launching the assault, but the dead-tree press.
Whether the Mail, Telegraph, Sun and Express are doing this because they think it's right; or because they want to ally themselves with the Conservatives in return for favours somewhere further down the road if they are successful; or because the Conservatives have fed them these stories to attack the rival they fear could see their support crumble, and the newspapers have agreed; or because these papers have nailed their inky colours to the mast of the Good Ship Tory and don't want to be made to look like mugs for getting it wrong; or for any combination of these is a bit of a mystery for we mere punters perusing the papers at the news-stand or seeing their efforts online.
But what's clear is the overwhelming impression you get from it all. As I said yesterday, there's a whiff of desperation, of hysteria, of readers being told that they are wrong and that they should jump into line, rather than reflecting their mood and writing for them. Is it crossing a line from seriously covering the election and putting the Lib Dems under the correct amount of scrutiny, to an out-and-out "Get Clegg" campaign? If it has crossed that line, that might reflect badly on those who are doing it. We've seen this level of personal attack before, against Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot, but that was during a time when there were fewer competing sources of information, when newspapers had more clout - and more readers - and when the internet wasn't there to hold the scrutineers up to scrutiny, watching them, watching us.
Are these front pages, then, the death throes of our inky friends at the national newspapers, desperately trying to wind themselves up for one last big swing at power, doing everything they can to bring the Conservatives to power, hoping they might get something in return one day somewhere along the line (or possibly even having been promised something in return)? Who's listening? And is there a danger that this could all backfire, and create a recalcitrance among their readers, who are fed up with being told what they should and shouldn't think?
If you look at the individual attacks, it's perhaps only the Telegraph's that appears to be a story at all - and even then, it's a massive amount of coverage for money that has been dealt with and accounted for, and where there is no suggestion that the money was 'resting in the account' of Clegg, or had been used in any way improperly. It's a tale, of course, and something worth telling; but it's not a killer blow, much as roaring Tory cheerleaders might try and tell you it is. Is it worth as much of the front page as it gets? I'm not so sure. Which makes you wonder why it has got so much. Did the Tele put this together ages ago, and have it ready as a hand grenade for election time? Or did they go back through their expenses stories with a fine-tooth comb to find something to launch at the Lib Dem leader? If it's something they've been storing up, that doesn't reflect well on the Telegraph at all; it smacks of them trying to influence an election then claim credit for the result afterwards rather than tell stories when they're relevant - though of course there could be similar front-page massive stories about the Conservative Party that they've been holding in reserve until now - but we'll see about that.
The Sun's is simply a representation of Clegg making mistakes - though it's hard to overestimate, when you look at the detail, the seriousness of these supposed errors or how gravely they will really damage the party. Again, it's a front page story about something less than consequential. The Express, meanwhile, is of course obsessed with immigration, as it has been for some time, but that counts against it in the final analysis - we've seen so many immigration lies down the months and years, and so much rubbish spoken about it, that it's hard to take them seriously now, even if they had a point. Besides, there's nothing wrong with allowing asylum seekers to work, in my opinion - but it's nice for the Express to admit this, for once, when it usually claims asylum seekers are 'spongeing' and fails to mention that they're not permitted to earn a living.
And so to the Mail. If you haven't read the perfectly justified and well written Nick Clegg piece from November 2002 that's supposedly the cause of the 'Nazi' business, then read it here. I find it hard to argue with anything he writes there - or to be more specific wrote seven-and-a-half years ago, despite the Mail giving the impression in its headline that this has all happened recently (not that they cared at the time). And as Chris pointed out, it's a bit daft of the Mail to say Clegg's words about WW2 obsession are wrong on the same page as giving away a DVD of the Second World War - In Colour*. You could also say it's a bit rich for the Mail to say Clegg was wrong when one of its own writers has a rather unhealthy obsession with 'Nazis' and 'fascists''.
This isn't the first time the Mail has attempted a 'Nazi' slur on a Lib Dem. Last year I wrote about how the paper had launched an attack on Lembit Opik for his great uncle's' alleged collaboration during the war - though of course they didn't mention Mail owner Jonathan Harmsworth's grandfather, a friend of 'my dear Fuehrer' Adolf Hitler, or the 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' heritage of their own publication - funny that.
None of which is to say that there shouldn't be due scrutiny of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, because of course there should. But fair scrutiny and real stories, not just smears and mud-chucking, hoping that some of it will stick, which is what appears to be happening at the moment. There's a real chance that the right-wing press are going to dig their own graves with this one, either way - if they appear to influence the election and destroy a candidate, what does that say about our press, and about them? But if they are shown not to have any influence, what then? And of course there's another possibility - it's possible that they are already so discredited, these attacks only serve to make people decide that whoever they are attacking deserves to be taken seriously. Whatever happens, it's a fascinating time.
* In colour? In colour. The black and white bits have been shoved in a bin. Colour war only! Or 3-D! Now, the Boer War, in HD!
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