Debasing Political Debate
Martin Kettle writing in The Guardian has some interesting and reflective things to say about the state of modern politics in the UK - and that's without going anywhere near social media where accusations of mendacity, conspiracy and traitorous behaviour are everywhere these days.
Martin Kettle's column was written before the terrible murder of Labour MP Jo Cox and as a result of her shocking death campaigning has been halted in next week's EU referendum, in which many people will have already voted, of course, thanks to the postal voting system.
Whether things will return to business as normal in a few days remains to be seen, but there's no doubt in my mind that the language of political discourse is at an all time low, and it's not just the newspapers that are to blame.
Because it's commonplace these days for political activists to demonise and monster their opponents at every turn, so that a disagreement that starts out as a difference of opinion or clash of ideas quickly turns into an angry, snarling bear pit - one where the 'other side' is portrayed as dishonest, insincere and disreputable.
The EU referendum is a battle of the press versus democracy
By Martin Kettle - The Guardian
The question of who runs Britain is not just about Europe but about a rightwing media that craves power
The front page of the Daily Mail, 4 February 2016. Photograph: Associated Newspapers
The parallels between David Cameron and Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour prime minister, may not seem obvious at first sight. Cameron, after all, is the son of a stockbroker and a baronet’s daughter, educated at Eton and Oxford, and is every inch a Conservative. MacDonald, on the other hand, was the illegitimate son of a Morayshire farm labourer and a housemaid, left school at 15 and was for much of his life – a fact that tends to be overshadowed by his later break with Labour – a man of the socialist left.
Yet if Cameron is forced to resign as prime minister after losing the EU referendum a week from now, the two men may have something rather more specific in common. In that event, Cameron could become the first British prime minister since MacDonald, more than 90 years ago, to be brought down by the British press and, more specifically, to be ousted by the Daily Mail.
Of course, like Cameron’s putative collapse next week, MacDonald’s fall in October 1924 had many other causes. The precise role of the Daily Mail among them is much debated by historians. But it was the Mail that, four days before the 1924 general election, published the so-called Zinoviev letter. This forgery of a letter, purporting to come from a top communist in Moscow, urged the signing of a treaty with the Soviet Union in order to assist the Bolshevisation of British workers. Within a week Labour, and MacDonald, were swept from power.
To say that today’s Daily Mail relies on forgeries in its long attempt to drive Britain out of the EU, in which Cameron’s fall would be more than just collateral damage if it happens, would be false. Nor would the Mail’s campaign be the sole reason for a Brexit vote. But to say that the Daily Mail, then and now, has at its heart a rightwing political project, rather than a purely journalistic project, would not be false at all.
