Media Mispotrayal of a Not-So Complex Position
- Liam John
- Oct 7, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 28, 2019
The Labour left has long protested about bias in the mainstream press. It has been one of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s key strategic considerations when deciding strategy in both the EU referendum and the 2017 general election.
Lately, it has been less of a “media-bias” and more of a misportrayal of a party engaging in what could be considered as standard political opportunism, as some sort of complex and indecisive entity full of warring factions.
The first burning example is the case of Labour’s Brexit policy – which has consistently been met with wilful befuddlement by vast swathes of the British press. The Labour party originally wished to honour the result of the referendum in 2017.
However, this year approaching the Brexit deadline, membership polling showed that a considerable percentage of its members – around 80% – supported remaining in the EU.
After this, the party became more open and approached where they currently stand. The shadow government’s current Brexit policy is to negotiate a new deal, then put this deal to the people in another Leave-Remain referendum.
This strategically complex and multi-faceted tactical operation to try and win the next general election – try to keep up – by achieving the most votes has utterly perplexed the majority of the British press, and by extension, the public.
The baffled bewilderment continued at the end of September when Labour voted against holding a general election. The burning question became: why would the main opposition party turn down a general election?
The most cynically obvious answer, somehow lost amongst all of the bizarre: “most dangerous chicken” stories, has been missed.
The Conservative party’s approval rating amongst the public, according to the most recent ComRes poll, is at 28%. The same poll put Jeremy Corbyn’s approval rating at 27%. Anything other than a win for Johnson is a loss.
The Prime Minister has had worse early-days approval than any other of the last forty years, and since taking office he has been promising to do something which now appears to be legally impossible (Leave on October 31st).
If the opposition pushes the Prime Minister beyond the end of the month, they will either force him to resign or seek an extension, something he said he’d rather: “die in a ditch” than do.
A better question to ask would be: Why would the main opposition throw a shaky Prime Minister a lifeline when they could take six weeks to prepare for an election?
Playing politics shouldn’t be so nonplussing in, well, politics.
Media biases? Probably.
A complete political blind-spot towards the main opposition party? Definitely.
My stance is that Labour, and despite their horrendous Brexit policy – the Lib Dems’, are doing the right thing by holding-out on a general election.
The only conceivable way for us to have anything other than a Tory government for four years is for Labour to use this time to bridge the gap in the polls.
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