Trussed Up – how the Daily Mail screws with the national conversation

Trussed Up: How the Daily Mail tied itself in knots over the Tory leadership

 

On 7 July last year, The Other Half and I were travelling home from a holiday on Rügen, Germany’s largest island, which is on the Baltic. As we piled into the taxi from our holiday home to head to the railway station, we caught the radio news.

 

The words ‘Boris Johnson’ featured highly. Our driver told us that it was top of the German news cycle. “Boris Johnson ist total verrückt!” I exclaimed, finding it the best my limited German could manage (translation: ‘Boris Johnson is totally crazy’).

 

He howled with laughter. I rather like to think that he later shared this with friends over a beer, as an anecdote of what at least what one Brit thought of Johnson – and could even convey it in German.

 

It was four hours back to Hamburg. But on an excellent German train, with excellent onboard wifi, that ensured we were glued to the slow-mo car crash taking place back in London.

 

By the time we got home, Johnson was no longer the prime minister.

 

Hurrah!

 

Or perhaps less so.

 

For three utterly exhausting months, the country had to watch – helplessly – as The Conservative and Unionist Party first elected a new leader, then dumped her after she screwed the economy, and then found a quick way to choose a third leader (and second unelected prime minister).

 

And a crucial part of that farce was played by the Daily Mail – ‘the voice of Middle England’ – which loves to pretend that it represents ‘common sense’ etc.

 

Liz Gerard is “Long in tooth and sometimes claw, old poacher turns gamekeeper to watch the Press”, as per her Twitter profile. She has had a journalistic career of over 40 years, including 30 as a night editor at The Times.

 

Here, she has done a detailed analysis of the Daily Mail over that quarter of a year, illustrating its massive influence over Tory MPs and members.

 

It is, in effect, a diary, charting the opinion columns and leaders surrounding the issue.

 

Those of us who are aware of what the Mail is like might not be expecting to be surprised. However, what Gerard has done reveals the absolute precision of a real sub-editor (traditionally paid better that reporters on ‘The Street’ for being more literate etc) and shining a light on how the Mail works against democracy.

 

Concentrating on this specific, tumultuous time, she shows precisely how the Mail terrifies Tory MPs. And indeed, she hardly needs to make much extraneous comment – when you see/read the Mail content in this condensed way, it’s very clear what a danger this is and how much sheer hypocrisy there is.

 

I grew up in a rabidly Mail home; I know what this paper does. What Gerard has done here is brilliant in making it so clear just how the publication works against democracy, the public and political debate.

 

I have never read as many parts of Mail editorials as in the last two days reading this book – and never has it been clearer that so much of it is hysterical, pearl clutching with little relation to reality.

 

Gerard has done us all a favour – reminding us just how bad the Mail is, how and why. It is a malign influence on the country’s life. Read this – and spread the word about why and how.

You can buy the book here. 

You can follow Liz over on Twitter twitter.com/gameoldgirl.

The language of demonisation – and the language of change

Makeshift Ethiopian Orthodox church at Calais migrants' camp

It’s not often that the media has much actual meat to get its teeth into during the annual silly season, but this summer has been an exception.

There has, of course, been the ongoing issue of many thousands of people attempting to flee into Europe from war and poverty.

That some have then made it to Calais, where they have attempted – and are still attempting – to circumvent security and make it to the UK via the Chunnel, however dangerous the journey, has given rise to a particular strand of coverage in the last couple of months.

The lurid, sensationalist language of invasion and of insects – yes, Mr Cameron, I am looking at you, with your use of “swarm” – has again indicated the piss-poor nature of British public and political discourse.

For some in the right-wing media, it brought with it the equally wonderful opportunity to bash the BBC as Auntie filmed an edition of Songs of Praise from a makeshift chapel in the Calais camps where migrants are staying.

Many are the same sort of people who waste no opportunity to intone how ‘we are still a Christian country,’ but either their knowledge of actual Christianity is sadly lacking or they simply don’t mind being steaming hypocrites who have no intention of actually acting and thinking on the basis of that religion.

The idea that showing human compassion – never mind the variety recommended by Jesus (according to the Good Book) – is automatically a synonym for ‘let them all in’ would be ridiculous were it not for the way that it has been taken up by substantial numbers of people who appear incapable of rational thought.

The vicious hate to be seen on newspaper forums, on social media etc about the issue can make you despair. It’s yet another example of how easy the demonisation of ‘others’ is – and it’s a salutary reminder of how what happened in Germany in the 1930s did happen.

Always easier, of course, when many in the population are struggling, have little security and see little hope for improvement.

Anyone claiming that ‘we’ can easily accommodate a few more thousand etc would apparently be oblivious to the reality that, at present, ‘we’ cannot provide work or a home for all those currently in the UK. And see the previous paragraph.

Mass immigration is also problematic in terms of economics quite simply because, in increasing the size of the available labour market, it helps depress wages: there is a reason that the likes of the CBI do not want restrictions on immigration and even persuaded then Conservative leader Michael Howard out of making manifesto pledges on reducing and restricting immigration.

It’s also worth noting that this used to be the mainstream left-wing view on the subject – before that metamorphosed into Tony Blair and his fellow neo-liberals.

And there is a reason that Margaret Thatcher declared New Labour/Blair to be her “greatest achievement”.

The long-term solution to the migrant situation need to be global and need to involve the sort of peace and prosperity for all that will obviate the need or desire for hundreds of thousands of human beings to take great risks to improve their lives or even to survive. Anything else is mere sticking plasters.

Which brings us rather adroitly to the summer’s second media circus – but one where, unlike the issue of would-be migrants, the right-wing media is failing to control the terms of discussion and use it as a means of further controlling the populace.

The Labour Party’s leadership election has seen the astonishing rise of Jeremy Corbyn – “astonishing”, that is, if you don’t pay any attention to anything much at all.

In case you missed it, things started getting messy when Corbyn got just enough nominations to be included on the ballot – partly as a result of people nominating him in order to expand the nature of the discussion that would occur during the election process.

In addition to this, the election process has been changed, with people able to register with the Labour Party as a ‘supporter’ for £3, and then vote.

It’s a clunky (to put it politely) mechanism – and unfair on activists who have spent years in the party working for it on a voluntary basis – but the aim, of opening up the process and encouraging engagement, is a valid one.

And it is one that has been achieved.

But now we’ve got the horror of loads of Trotskyist entryists trying to vote (for Corbyn, of course), plus loads of Tories doing the same – as openly encouraged by the Telegraph, in an example of why it’s days as a class newspaper are behind it.

For the latter, the idea is that Corbyn as Labour leader would finish the party for decades.

It’s good to know how much some care about democracy.

The Labour hierarchy is in meltdown, running around like headless chickens, while New Labour grandees such as Blair himself and Peter Voldemort Mandelson warn that it would be the end of life as we know it and they should stop the election itself.

Jackboot Jack Straw has weighed in, and even Charles Clarke has popped up to leave most scratching their heads and wondering who he was.

Blair in particular managed to be particularly snide, asserting that, “if your heart’s with Jeremy Corbyn, get a transplant”.

Packin' 'em in in Middlesbrough

Which, given the way the Islington MP has been packin’ ’em in at rallies across the country, and appears to be gaining support from across the spectrum of age, gender, race etc, is a large number of people requiring radical cardio surgery.

One cannot help but wonder how an NHS that was helped on the path to privatisation by Blair will cope.

Behind all this is the belief that a Labour Party headed by Corbyn cannot not possibly win a general election.

Brits don’t want a lefty – look what happened to Michael Foot etc. Actually, what happened to Foot was that he was doing fine in the polls until Margaret Thatcher had a little war that she was able to garner support from. It has not been known, for years, as the ‘Falklands Factor’ for nothing.

But let’s not allow facts to get in the way, eh?

Various right-wing papers have been trying smears.

Having already spoken to the market trader who sells him his vests (when it was all still funny), and then failed to make allegations of anti-semitism stick, the Daily Mail ran out of material for attempted smears and last week turned to an epic piece of fantasy fiction titled “Prime Minister Corbyn … and the 1,000 days that destroyed Britain”.

Alternative histories are a popular sub-genre: perhaps it’ll be nominated for a Hugo.

So a simple question, folks: if Corbyn is ‘unelectable’, why has the right-wing media suddenly gone from pointing and laughter to desperate attempts to smear?

And why are the neo-liberal Blairites running so scared?

Well, the reasons should be clear to anyone.

The right is perfectly well aware that he could actually win (in an interview with the Huffington Post, Conservative grandee Ken Clarke stated this quite clearly) – because the right knows that people actually want an alternative to the neo-liberal hegemony of the last 30 years and it knows that Corbyn presents the possibility of a Labour Party that offers one.

The general public show no sign of currently wanting a Labour Party that, quite frankly, is little different from the present government.

They are sick of career politicians who are smooth and slick – and never give a straight answer.

Corbyn’s campaign has been gracious and he has refused to stoop to the negative (there has been negativity and nastiness from some supporters on all sides).

His policies – far from being the “hard left” that so many are claiming: in that previously-mentioned interview, Ken Clarke described him as not as left-wing as Foot, and Clarke is no fool – are being welcomed widely.

And given the continuing housing crisis in the UK, who can be surprised that the idea of building more council housing would be welcomed?

Who can be surprised that it’s popular to talk of renationalisation of the railways – just as we learn that rail fares are rising by three times the rate of pay increases?

Corbyn’s economic ideas have received backing from 30-plus economists – and even a blog from the Financial Times that explained that his idea of ‘quantitative easing for the people’ is not actually nonsense and could actually work (nor is it wildly radical).

Even some on the right are noting that, while they might disagree with his ideas, it’s refreshing to see a conviction politician again.

Earlier this year, Scottish voters rejected the idea that austerity is the only way – and dumped a party that had treated the country as a sinecure for years.

The idea that Labour can win an outright majority at a future general election by winning some Conservative votes south of the border, at the same time as not losing more core votes in the heartlands (it also lost an estimated five million core voters between 1997 and 2010) and all the while without winning back Scottish voters, is barking.

The idea that the Ed Miliband election manifesto was too anti-business (as former Chancellor and shadow chancellor Ed Balls claimed at the end of July) and too left-wing to win in May is nonsense.

When Miliband announced the idea of a crackdown on non doms, his and the party’s ratings increased. And promising to tackle corporate tax evasion is not a synonym for being anti-business – or if you think it is, then you have a problem.

The right-wing press got lucky in the spring: they latched onto something that caused swing voters the real horrors: the idea of a coalition between Labour and the SNP. There was a reason that, having once spotted the impact of that message, they hammered it home for the final fortnight of campaigning.

To reiterate: the idea that Labour can win a general election on the basis of winning those same potential swing voters, without returning to winning ways in Scotland, and without losing even more core voters elsewhere, is illogical nonsense – at best.

This is not about saying that Jeremy Corbyn is some sort of messiah: it is about pointing out that people want an alternative to the busted flush of austerity – even the IMF has warned the UK that the cuts are too much – and they do not want a party that is interested only in winning for power’s sake.

They want Labour to be an actual opposition – not limply abstaining on Bills that are set to hurt many thousands of ordinary people. And claiming – as some have – that such things would make Labour just a ‘protest party’ is an avoidance of what ordinary people are facing.

People want alternatives – that’s why smaller parties, from the Greens to UKIP, have been gaining support.

This entire process also suggests the possible end of Blairism in the Labour Party – Liz Kendall, the Blairite candidate for the leadership, was absolutely mullered in the constituency nominations, securing just 18 as opposed to Yvette Cooper’s 109, Andy Burnham’s 111 and Corbyn’s 152.

All this the neo-liberals and right-wing know.

And that is why they’re not laughing at Corbyn any more.

Whether he wins the election or not, he has changed the nature of the debate and triggered a reinvigoration of political discourse reminiscent of what was seen during the Scottish referendum campaign a year ago.

If you like hegemonies, that’s not good.

So, in the remaining days of the campaign, the best that could happen would be for Kendall, Cooper and Burnham to stop condemning Corbyn and his supporters – and to concentrate on suggesting some policies that show that they do believe in something; indeed, that they believe that there is a meaningful alternative to the policies of the current government.

Because, if they do not believe even that simple little thing – then what is the point of their being in opposition?

• For the record, I am not registered to vote in the Labour leadership election and did not apply to do so.

A tale of vaginas and how some expect us to behave

Just don't

It’s been a wonderful couple of days for vaginas.

Only yesterday, news emerged that, addressing the Cambridge Union Society earlier this week, good old Germaine Greer observed that trans women weren’t real women because they don’t know what it’s like “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina”.

In the meantime, news – and admittedly I use the word lightly – reached these shores that Gwyneth Paltrow is promoting the steaming with herbs of said vaginas to keep them nice and fresh and the owner ‘energised’.

Then today, the hashtag #NoHymenNoDiamond appeared on my Twitter timeline.

Although this appears to have actually started at least as early as last autumn, it’s today picked up a lovely head of steam (though there’s no evidence that steaming breaks or heals a hymen).

There’s also no evidence that those who tweeted it actually thought about how they’d check such a thing before the wedding day.

But then again, we’re not talking about people with big brains.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, it’s pretty much a racing certainty that life at the Daily Mail this past week has seen editor and champion of women everywhere, Paul Dacre, illustrating his notorious talent for ‘double cunting’: there’s a reason his editorial meetings are known as ‘the vagina monologue’.

So, is there a common theme here – beyond, y’know, stuff about cunts?

Well there’s certainly a steaming pile of irony.

Greer’s views on trans women are not themselves news, but although she slammed the views of some other feminists in the same speech, she shares with many radical feminists essentially the same attitude toward trans women (I don’t know if they have any opinion on trans men).

More than one rad fem has suggested that not having a womb discounts trans women from ... well, being a woman.

In other words, these feminists do precisely what they supposedly object to – and create an idea of womanhood that comes down to biology and sexual organs.

It’s no coincidence that rad fems in the US in particular have made unholy alliances with reactionary, Christian fundamentalist political groups and individuals. They are a form of reactionary fundamentalism.

I can’t answer for anyone else, but I know that I don’t want to be defined by whether I have a womb or whether my cunt is smelly.

Who would?

And who would imagine that those doing precisely that would, at the same time, equally want to say that women should not be defined in such a dreadfully limiting way by others?

I have no more right to define anyone else’s experience of their sex/gender than anyone does of mine.

As someone who has been described, by a long-time friend, as a “gay man in a woman’s body,” I’m well aware that there are many ways in which I do not personally conform to any conventional idea of womanhood.

But surely it’s precisely those ‘conventional’ ideas – and expectations and, with them, limits – that feminism seeks to combat?

If you want women to be able to escape lives based on restrictions imposed because of bodily functions, then it hardly seems sensible to use these same things to define women.

Many have found the obituary of best-selling author, and acclaimed scientist, Colleen McCullough, in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, to illustrate precisely what still faces many women.

It opens thus:

“COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: ‘I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting men’.”

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s would be difficult to know where to start. Thankfully, Twitter users came up with #MyOzObituary to illustrate the insanity.

But choosing to remember a successful and talented woman in such a fashion is no different in its limiting terms to claiming that her sexual organs are what defines a woman.

And this, perversely, has something in common with the idea of the vagina – via the hymen – of that previous hashtag.

That’s about ownership. It’s about defining a ‘good’ woman on the basis of sex and an idea about what identifies a woman who has had sex. Commenting on her looks is about defining her by them.

The #NoHymenNoDiamond hashtag is particularly dumb, of course, not least since many things can break the hymen, from tampon use to riding a bike.

But that’s the point: none of this is sensible. None of it employs common sense. None of it employs the matter between the ears.

According to the biological definition of a woman, anyone born with Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome (ie without a womb) would not qualify.

So it serves – once again – to illustrate a number of things.

One, that rad fems are not, for the main, really interested in women as a whole and in overcoming the limits that our society does place on them.

Two, that said radical feminists push an agenda that is yet another form of intolerant, bigoted and limiting reaction against progress, and we should not be suckered in to treated it as an intellectually-sound matter.

Three, that radical feminism is a form of secular fundamentalism that has nothing whatsoever to do with what the majority of women think and experience.

And four, that whatever some claim, the main issue that faces us today – that is, ALL of us – is still a class-based one, with a ruling class/supra-national corporatocracy etc using all its weight to gain yet more wealth, and damn everyone else, whether male or female, straight or not, trans or cis, black or white etc etc.

Just look at TTIP – and the ISDS clause in particular – to see this.

Dividing human beings along lines of sex and/or gender, into whether or not they have a cunt that smells or not is idiocy and ignores all the really important questions that face us ALL.

But hey: what a vagina of a few days it’s been!

Tabloids prove – yet again – that they won't learn

Here’s a thing: what will be the tipping point that means that the UK press faces regulation – however much it doesn’t want it?

The mainstream media has, thus far, managed to squirm out of any form of independent regulation, following the Leveson Inquiry.

And that bit about “independent” is important: no matter what some papers claimed, there was no plan for what the press publish to be subject to the machinations of politicians.

To remind ourselves: Leveson followed revelations about widespread phone-hacking – which, it is increasingly clear, did not just happen at the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, although there was an industrial amount of hacking there. The Mirror group is now in the spotlight too.

In an interesting little side note, it seems that four members of staff on the Mail on Sunday were told by the police in 2006 that their phones had been hacked by the NotW, but bosses at the Mail group decided to keep it secret – and they didn’t bother to mention it in evidence to Leveson either.

Mail on Sunday editor at the time, Peter Wright, has been a member of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) since 2008, taking over the position previously held by Mail editor in chief, Paul Dacre, from 1999-2008.

During that time, the PCC issued two reports on hacking, in essence backing up the version of events from News International that it hadn’t happened often and that it was all just the work of a “rogue reporter”.

Which is all rather odd.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, though, Wright and Dacre have subsequently succumbed to amnesia over the entire business of the hacking of their members of staff’s phones.

Mind you, amnesia, ignorance or straightforward incompetence seem to be the defence de rigueur of senior newspaper folk when it comes to such matters.

After all, her admitted total lack of knowledge of anything that went on in Rebekah Brooks’s newsrooms was accepted as a defence by the court in the recent hacking trial, while News International godfather, Murdoch himself, has been known to be remarkably vague when being questioned over the affair.

It says something for the confidence many of these people have in their power over government that the revelations have not noticeably improved the behavior of the tabloid media in particular.

Not that it’s the tabloids alone: Murdoch’s Times – which used to be the paper of record – has plummeted so far since he bought it that it’s current idea of political ‘debate’ is to call the leader of the opposition “weird”.

Such an approach, by nobody’s definition, can be remotely positive for the public discourse.

But for the sake of this article, let’s stick with the tabloids.

It’s not so long ago that several papers revealed themselves entirely happy to splash pictures on their front pages of the moment that Mick Jagger was told that his partner had taken her own life.

Public interest, anyone?

In the last few days, the odious Richard Littlejohn,whose bilious ignorance was just the most well-known example of the ‘mostering’of Lucy Meadows, who also took her own life, has again used his column in the Daily Mail to illustrate his ignorance of and attitude toward trans issues, with comments about Kellie Maloney – formerly known as boxing promoter Frank – looking as though she is in “drag”.

But a glance at this morning’s tabloids reveals a general approach that blithely ignores basic humanity, together with any idea of journalistic ethics (yes, they do exist).

The subject is the death of Hollywood star Robin Williams, who died by suicide.

The front pages alone seem to be competing to see who can publish the most details.

In the rush for sales, editors have chosen to deliberately ignore the guidelines on reporting suicide issued by the Samaritans.

These call, among other things, for great care to be exercised on details about how a person ended their life, precisely because readers who are themselves in a vulnerable situation can be influenced to copy a sensationally-reported suicide.

But sensation boost sales and sales matter more than human beings when it comes to the tabloids.

Point six of the National Union of Journalists’ Code of Conduct says that a journalist “does nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest”.

That’s the biggie, isn’t it: what is ‘the public interest’?

What was in the public interest that justified seeing Jagger’s reaction to the death of a loved one?

What was in the public interest that justifies the additional pain being inflicted on Williams’s family, and the potential danger to other vulnerable people caused by the nature of the reporting?

Here’s a clue: there is none.

The apologists can whine all they like that the public interest is what the public is interested in, but this is nonsense.

Let’s look at an example of ‘the public interest’.

Some years ago, during John Major’s time as Prime Minister, with a government set on promoting ‘family values’, a junior minister called Tim Yeo stood up at the Conservative Party annual conference and made a speech lambasting single mothers as the biggest problem of the day.

A couple of months later, it was revealed (in the News of the World) that he had been having an affair himself, and was the father of a child to a single woman. He resigned.

Here was a member of a government that was promoting one thing to the public, and condemning those who didn’t behave as it wanted, who included members who were themselves behaving in the same way.

That is why it was in the public interest to publish a story revealing that Yeo had been having an affair – not because of the affair itself, but because of the double standards by a member of the government.

And yes, the people that buy tabloids – particularly when they buy promises of lurid, sensationalist copy inside – are complicit in this pimping of other people’s private lives.

And as long as there is no regulation of the industry, it is a situation that seems likely to continue.

So, as I asked at the top of this: what will be the tipping point? What will it take before tabloids are forced to clean up their act?

After all, the hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s phone quite clearly wasn’t enough.

MediaGuidelines for Reporting Suicides from the Samaritans [PDF]

The National Union of Journalists’ Code of Conduct