Personality politics, the media and extremism: Brexit, Trump, and the rise of Populism in the 21st century

There have long been complaints that the world has been getting more superficial, and in the case of media (and its coverage of politics) the complaint seems to be well-deserved.

The problem boils down to issues like "ratings". In essence, its about making television "entertaining", and newspapers making their coverage popular. Political coverage therefore has to fit into the same lens in order to be accessible to the general public. Equally, however, the media operate in an environment shared by their political masters, meaning that overt criticism of some figures can lead to negative consequences for a media outlet (such as losing "access"); so a fine line is often taken by the fourth estate. Both these factors together explain how media coverage of politics has gradually become more superficial and less informative (and informed). The degree of that superficiality has only become truly clear with the rise of Trump in the USA and the cause of "Brexit" in the UK.

"Personality politics" has its roots in the political campaigns for people like Reagan in the USA, continued by the likes of Bill Clinton, which was then copied by Tony Blair. Following from Blair in the UK, we had David Cameron, who molded the Conservative Party in his own image.
The personality politics that these figures harnessed was about capturing the "centre ground". While much of Reagan's rhetoric was Libertarian in its outlook, in office he was often more pragmatic - and more "centrist" - than some people realized at the time. This explained why he won successive elections. Clinton and Blair achieved the same, using the same centrist platform, albeit coming from the other side of the political spectrum.
However, personality politics doesn't work in a vacuum, and it needs a media platform in order to thrive. That media platform has been intertwined with the political sphere for decades, as those in politics and the media often share the same background, educational ties and peer groups. In short, media coverage of politics occupied its own bubble: in the USA it was all about life inside "The Beltway", while in the UK it was all about Westminster gossip.
That superficial fascination with "gossip" was another facet of the entertainment factor in politics. As much of politics is dry and technical to the layman, it requires titillation and personality to bring it alive. This explains why the most famous politicians in Capitol Hill or Westminster were always the ones who were used acts of showmanship. In Ronald Reagan, a former actor, the USA had someone who understood this very well. Donald Trump today has his own exaggerated (but very successful) form of showmanship, clearly modeled on that of Reagan.

A wit might say that politics is the realm of the failed actor. The politicians that have been successful have all used these skills in order to gain the limelight; the politicians that naturally have these skills can rise all the more quickly, along with the movement attached to them.
In the UK, the rise of UKIP is matched with the rise of the politician, Nigel Farage. Here is a figure who has had far more media coverage over the years - going back twenty years - than has merited the popularity of his party. And yet, it was only after the financial crisis (more on that later) that he came to dominate the political sphere so disproportionately.
On one hand, politics became more "professional" during the tenure of Clinton and Blair, so that by the end of the 1990s, there seemed to exist a kind of "conventional wisdom" in society, supported by the media and the political class, that made some issues seem "taboo" to talk about. This was the flip side to centrism. The political class and the media seemed complicit to those on the ideological fringes in shutting-down debate, so that the number of issues that came to be reported on and discussed dwindled. Social issues like racism and homophobia were tackled by government for he first time in living memory, leaving those on the ideological fringe to claim that they themselves were becoming a "persecuted minority". Thus were sown the seeds of the far-right claiming that they were fighting for "free speech", against a complicit media and centrist agenda.

Changes in technology and the rise of internet media have also seen a hollowing-out of traditional news media, like local newspapers. National news agencies have also had to rethink their priorities in the face of falling revenues thanks to these structural shifts in the media industry. What this has meant is that the kind of in-depth reporting that was once common (think how "Watergate" became exposed) has become increasingly difficult to finance. This has meant tough choices, and the result is that the level of reportage and knowledge of issues is not as thorough or as deep as it used to be.
This explains, for example, how the media in the UK have been so poor at grasping the many issues surrounding the implications for Brexit for the country. Apart from how these issues are reported (i.e. the degree of superficiality already mentioned), and the issue of media slant (i.e. not wanting to go against "established opinion") is the issue of how well it is reported in the first place. Simply, the lack of technical knowledge apparent in those working for the media means that they often don't even know what are the right questions to ask to begin with, let alone whether they choose to ask them or not.
In this way, dissemination and lies by politicians pass by unchecked, assumed as fact by media figures who often simply don't know what they're talking about. There is the facade of media interrogation when politicians are interviewed or asked questions after their public appearances, but this lack of technical knowledge, along with the media's own reasons for not wanting to "upset" politicians (as this could damage future "access") means that the public only ever get a "version" of the truth. This is one reason why, if you want to understand a story in any real detail, you need to read it from several media sources, and find the balance somewhere between them all.

This is where "fake news" gets its fuel from, and why Donald Trump's press office talked of "alternative facts". In a time when the media has been under financial pressures due to the structural changes talked of earlier, this allows the more unscrupulous parts of the media (i.e. those with overt ideological agendas) to claim that there is no "real" truth, only many different forms of it. Because the media have been attacked as being too "establishment" for before seeming to favor "centrist" candidates, this leaves them vulnerable to attack from those who have an agenda against centrism i.e. Populists.
Populism and personality politics have found the perfect environment to gestate in since the financial crisis. While prior to the financial crisis, personality politics usually favored centrist politics (thanks to a like-minded media), since then it has been the Populists that have gone from strength to strength.


The rise of Populism

The media were as blindsided by the financial crisis as the politicians were. In some ways, the financial crisis saw the end of unchallenged rule of "centrism". With the ideological walls of the establishment being shook by the financial crisis (let's not forget that only government bailouts prevented a second "Great Depression"), it forced the media to reassess the fluid political landscape. In the USA, the rise of the "TEA Party", a hard-right faction of the Republicans, matched the concurrent rise of UKIP in the UK, itself effectively a hard-right faction of the Conservative Party.

While the TEA Party lacked one unifying, charismatic figure (with several personalities vying for preeminence), UKIP had Nigel Farage. In the years after the financial crisis, Farage's brand of British Populism (which like the TEA Party, had a Libertarian agenda) captured the media's attention. With Westminster seeming to represent all that was tired and out-of-touch since the financial crisis, most of the political "excitement" seemed to come from Farage. 
The media superficiality during the long period of centrist dominance before the financial crisis, along with earlier accusations of bias of "political correctness", meant that the pendulum swung the other way: disproportionate (and flattering) coverage was then given to Farage, allowing him to be seen as someone on the side of "the people" against the "the establishment". His background in The City was something that was easily brushed under the carpet. Meanwhile, those media outlets that did criticize his agenda were labelled as part of "the establishment" themselves, and so in the now-antagonistic atmosphere after the financial crisis, they couldn't win either way.

The only person in the political establishment in the UK that matched this new form of "personality politics" was Boris Johnson. After being Mayor of London for eight years, he had become the "king across the water" as far as David Cameron was concerned. Conveniently entering parliament in 2015 during his last year of tenure as London Mayor, he was able to use his position in Westminster as well as his media coverage to great effect during the EU referendum in 2016. Along with Farage, these two figures were largely responsible for the success of the "leave" campaign - the most obvious indication of the success of Populist "personality politics" over a centrist establishment.

And of course, at the same time across in the USA, we had the rise of Donald Trump. While the EU referendum was in full flow in the UK, the USA was in the presidential primaries, which allowed Trump to take advantage of the same anti-establishment agenda. Using the same skepticism that the "leave" campaign had towards "experts", Trump attacked "fake news" by the established media. And now with both "Brexit" as an unstoppable force, and Trump as an immovable object, we've entered an age when media outlets can be called "enemies of the people", and it all seem completely normal.

Populist "personality politics" could only have come to prominence due to the financial crisis, and the media's close connection with the political establishment. This allowed the media to be tarnished with the label of complicity. The superficiality of the media that gradually seeped into its culture led to its own decline, leaving it completely exposed, as the political establishment was, when the financial crisis came along. Since then, the political culture had become dominated by the rhetoric of Populism, supported by a media culture that has either lost its way, or is part of the same corrupt bargain.
As Populists generate greater "ratings", this means they get more coverage. It might make for good entertainment, but it leaves the media destroying its own integrity, to help the agenda of people who only see them as their puppets.

The Brexit Britain "parallel universe": self-obsessed Westminster and the media bubble

It seems increasingly apparent that the outside world no longer seems to really exist beyond the cliffs of Dover, as far as the government, and large swathes of the media are concerned.
 Michel Barnier has reminded the UK government for what feels like the umpteenth time already what leaving the EU and the single market will mean to Britain. But time and again, the government, supported by like-minded media moguls, dismiss whatever the EU has to say as simply "Project Fear". Time and again, Barnier reminds the government that the EU is simply responding to what the UK government has said it does and doesn't want. It was May's decision to leave the single market and customs union. It was the UK's decision to leave the EU. Barnier just reminds Britain, time and again, that actions have consequences. If the British government in incapable of accepting that basic fact, then that is not the EU's fault. It is not the EU's fault that Britain's government chose to leave; it was Britain that chose to leave the EU. If "Brexit means Brexit" and "leave means leave", then the EU simply is acting according to the legal consequences of those British decisions.

But this is the unreality that passes for life in the British media and politics. As European politicians are now seeing, as Britain before wanted to be in the EU but with lots of "opt-outs", now Britain wants to be out of the EU but with lots of "opt-ins".
This is what the British government's position boils down to. European politicians can only scratch their head at this attitude. Don't the politicians in Britain understand how the EU works? As Barnier explains repeatedly (as to a small child) how can they not see that this is simply not possible? The answer is that, no, most British politicians do not understand how the organisation Britain has been a part of for forty years works. Most have just never bothered. Besides, the fact that Britain has repeatedly achieved "opt-outs" over the years while in the EU simply reinforces the "delusions of grandeur" that many in the British government now possess, Theresa May included. They cannot get their heads around the simple fact that now Britain is an exiting member of the EU, the (last-minute) compromises that worked in the favour when they were a member are legally impossible with Britain as a "third country". Again, these are facts that the British government chooses to ignore.

Theresa May makes speeches declaring her "red lines", which are largely aimed for domestic (political) consumption. But because the government makes no other effort to coach this in its true (internal) context, outside interests such as the EU or foreign multinationals can only assume she means what she says. What other evidence have they to go on?
As was once said, "idle talk costs lives"; in today's context, May's "idle talk" is costing the country its reputation. The belligerent talk at the EU from both the government and supportive areas of the media (seemingly working in concert) can only be interpreted by Brussels at face value. If Britain sees the EU as a "hostile power" that is trying to punish it for leaving, then the EU can only respond in kind, as a matter of self-interest. The damage being done to Britain's reputation and its future can only be laid at Britain's door. The EU is simply responding to what Britain is doing.

The sense that the British government and the media are ignoring reality is hard to miss. Some newspapers and some politicians are eager to explain to whoever is listening of the sheer madness of the government's "red lines" (as well as parts of industry explaining how, if implemented, they would likely wipe out segments of Britain's economy). The problem is that these facts are dismissed by the quiescent media, well-connected interest groups and the government itself as "Project Fear", again and again; these well-founded fears are further discredited by seeing such talk as defeatist or worse, borderline treasonous. Thus the average person in Britain is faced with a mainstream media industry that is simply not telling them the truth, probably because many of them either support the government ideologically, or have ulterior motives.
In this sense, the "free" press is no longer interested in facts, but the dissemination of opinion and propaganda. Reports about the EU and Brexit are only reported if they can be "spun" to suit a certain agenda, such as the wider ideological bent of the editor. For many papers, talking of the dangers of "Hard Brexit" is tantamount to career suicide, due to the symbiotic relationship (from the commercial necessity of scoops and exclusives) that they have with the government. The BBC is as guilty of this as the more usual suspects; they need to keep in the government's "good books" for the licence fee, and to ensure that their "impartial" reputation with ministers allows a steady stream of Westminster gossip to fill the airways.
This facile and self-serving relationship large parts of the media have with Westminster therefore dumbs down the tone of debate to something puerile and self-serving, where political trivialities are seen are more interesting to report on than the far more consequential "boring" technicalities. In this way, even those media outlets naturally sceptical of the government's strategy are forced to repeat their nonsense to maintain a worthwhile line of communication, or risk being black-marked. Meanwhile, in the ideologically-supportive press, the consequences of the government's "red lines" when explained by the EU are explained as either scaremongering or a "negotiation tactic". The sad truth is that if someone in Britain wants to get reliable information about Brexit, they would be better to look outside the UK.

Aside from the inherent unreliability of the mainstream media for all the reasons mentioned, the government itself is the last person to go to for information on Brexit. Apart from the obvious self-serving agenda is the fact that information is so hard to come by in any case. While the EU's negotiation strategy is published regularly for public consumption, the British government's strategy is hidden from the public eye, with access to all relevant documentation to Brexit tightly-controlled. Even parliament struggles to obtain any useful information (such as the (in)famous "impact assessments"). Again, like with the media's treatment of information on Brexit, even the government's own reports that explain the likely effect the government's "red lines" will have on the economy are dismissed by the government as scaremongering. When you are up against such an attitude to government as this, what chance is there of technical experts getting a fair hearing?

In terms of the negotiations, the British government isn't even "negotiating" with the EU in any real sense. It is arguable that it never really was, in a true sense of the word, because it saw its negotiations in a zero-sum perspective and was thus not interested in working in mutual advantage. While the government declared that it was in both the UK's and the EU's interests to avoid cross-border friction for trade, the British government refused to accept any of the suggestions that the EU offered that were feasible, such as membership of EFTA. Instead, Theresa May created her "red lines" that unilaterally reduced Britain's options, meaning that the only legal option left for the EU was some form of future FTA with Britain. And still the government insists that what it wanted was something else, more "ambitious", that took account of Britain's "unique" status as a former EU member. Thus, unable to see beyond the self-obsessed insularity of its own historical power, Britain demands that the EU break its own rules to satisfy the whims of a non-member. Unable to see that it was Theresa May's "red lines" that were creating Britain's problems for it, the government insists that it is the EU that must break its own rules to solve the problems that Britain created for itself. The abject inability of the government to see how pathologically myopic its behaviour is has demonstrated how dangerously detached from reality "Brexit Britain" has become.
The government and media's chronic insularity means that all the talk of the Brexit negotiations is about what the various British government ministers want to achieve post-Brexit, regardless of if this is even remotely acceptable to the EU. The story is repeated week after week, with the media obsessed with how the government argues with itself about what Brexit "vision" it has at that moment, with no thought at all to what the most important player in the negotiations would think: the EU. If the "negotiations" are meant to mean anything, then Britain has the obligation to find a "deal" with the EU; the alternative is "no deal". But Britain's position is so self-obsessed that they either cannot see this, or refuse to believe it. Instead, they see the EU's position as secondary to the government's own interests, which it ties itself in knots over in any case. The British government can't even negotiate with itself, let alone the EU. Meanwhile, the government's interlocutors in Brussels become more and more baffled with the aims that Britain's ministers say the country wishes post-Brexit, as they are completely incompatible with reality. To outsiders, it looks as though London is ruled by either madmen or morons.

It is this "parallel universe" that outsiders experience when they encounter the British media or political establishment. Much of the media have lost all objectivity; those who are not supportive of the government are dismissed as doing down the country, while even facts presented that are somewhat accurate fail to provide anywhere near the right level of detail. Meanwhile, the government pursues its own internal squabble over Brexit, completely detached from reality.

Are "Brexiteers" the real "enemies of the people"? Libertarians, the role of media barons and interest groups

If you feel that Britain has perceptively changed since the referendum, you might not be alone. There is plenty of evidence that the "change" is deliberate.

What does it mean to be "British"? This is one of the cultural questions that the referendum campaign inevitably raised. Also inevitably, your answer depends very much on your background and worldview.
According to research, the thing that Britons are most proud of is the NHS. What's telling about this is that, compared to other values and older institutions (e.g. the monarchy), this is a relatively recent addition to British life; even though it is clearly taken as an integral part of British life, the NHS was only created thanks to a "socialist" government after the Second World War.
What this also tells us, and what the EU referendum told us, is that there are two distinct forms of British identity: one might be called the "communitarian" world-view (i.e. seeing the world as a community), and the other the "individualistic", which sees it through the lens of individual actions and individual moral responsibility. This mirrors the "open" and "closed" views reflected in the "remain" versus "leave" camps, also referred to as the "Anywhere" versus "Somewhere" culture wars.

In understanding where people's value for the NHS comes from, it's also important to remember that "charity" was something almost unheard of until Victorian times. In fact, it was government "moral aversion" to help the starving that led to the Irish Potato Famine; the government didn't want to encourage the idea of "something for nothing", and was largely indifferent to the fate of the starving millions across the Irish Sea. This government culture of indifference to the suffering it has created (and a scepticism towards "need" in general) is one that the current Conservative government has restored in all its inhumane glory, when you look at the wider effects of austerity and the "hostile environment".
Thus, the idea of good-natured "British values" is not something that was innate, but was created over time, relatively recently. Before the Victorian sea-change in the moral attitude towards charity, those in need were left to fend for themselves in a "sink or swim" society that Ayn Rand and her Libertarian fans in the current UK government would recognise. This is, in large part, the society that still exists in the modern-day USA, in spite of their high levels of taxation (which do not pay towards people's health and well-being!). The modern idea of British values of compassion towards the worse-off and vulnerable in society is exactly that: a modern construct, largely non-existent before the 20th century, and only made large progress forward thanks to the "socialist" Attlee government after the Second World War. The Conservative Party's embrace of those same postwar values was what allowed them to return to government.

It was only the complex challenges of the 1970s that allowed the Libertarians like Margaret Thatcher a chance to get into power. This enabled them to gradually reverse many of the "socialist" strategies that had been used up till that point since the war. The author has explained elsewhere how this small group of ideological extremists were able to take control of the Conservative Party, taking it in a direction that many of the traditionalists were initially highly-uncomfortable with. In short, it was about turning Britain, step-by-step, into a small-scale clone of the USA, parked next to the European continent. 
This is where we see how Libertarians are, in many ways, trying to turn Britain into a foreign country. The progress that had been made in making Britain more egalitarian, more compassionate towards the needy and vulnerable, was quickly undone by Thatcher and her successors (even, to an extent, during the Labour years in office). While the Labour government did make some modest progress in reversing some of Thatcher's inequality, it followed other areas of her economic strategy almost without a second thought, leaving some parts of the country with chronic levels of deprivation, while London grew ever wealthier.
The financial crisis was a direct product of that short-sighted economic strategy, with a new generation of Libertarians, thirty years on from Thatcher, reaping the electoral benefits of Labour's misguided desire to ingratiate themselves with "The City". The austerity strategy was the Conservatives new method to strip back the role of government in people's lives, to a form of "small government" that even Thatcher was too wary to attempt.


Manipulating reality

Throughout this period - the thirty-year era from Thatcher's rise to power to the effects of the financial crisis - the print media played an integral role. Newspapers like the Sun, Daily Mail and Express account for the bulk of Britain's readership, and they claim to "speak for Britain". The reality is, not surprisingly, very different. There is plentiful evidence that they speak to Britain, and are able to manipulate their readers' perception of reality. This will explained about more a little later.

There was a time when the Sun was a Labour-supporting newspaper, but by the time the Libertarian Margaret Thatcher had succeeded Ted Heath as Conservative Party leader, that was no longer really true. Newspaper editors could see ways that they could get rich from a Thatcher government, and so did their best to create an impression of a country that was falling apart under Labour. At times this wasn't difficult, given the challenges that government all across the world were facing then. Her intent to radically reduce the influence of the unions was manna from heaven as far as they were concerned as, from their own point of view, it meant newspapers could then more easily lay off staff and reduce their overheads. Meanwhile, loosening other regulations meant they could more easily expand their profits and buy out smaller competitors.
When Thatcher did get into office, this also meant that inconvenient truths could be ignored. In her first few years in office, unemployment tripled to levels far higher than they had ever been under the previous Labour government. However, it was more common to see stories about crime, race riots and union unrest in the news; these stories fit into a "moral narrative" that fit the agenda. Rather than rising crime and unrest being down to social and economic factors brought on by government policy (i.e. the millions of unemployed), it was explained (and implied) that it was down to individual choices. Whereas before Thatcher crime and unrest was the result of the Labour government's weaknesses, under the the Thatcher government crime and unrest was now the result of weaknesses in society that were being manipulated by immoral individuals.

This common theme ties back to what was said about individualism and British values. Media barons were more equating British values with "individual responsibility" than compassion for the worse-off. This also explains how news stories can easily manipulate their readers' perceptions of reality.
If a newspaper editor decides that the paper needs a "campaign" on an issue, the newspaper then becomes disproportionately saturated with stories related to the campaign. Usually, this is over some form of "moral panic". Thus the newspaper creates an artificial environment for the reader where they think that this issue has become one of national importance, rather than (in reality) an agenda of the editor.
By the 1980s, stories in the three newspapers mentioned that related to the then EEC projected almost universal negativity towards Brussels, and this has remained unchanged ever since. Thus the reader got the consistent impression that Brussels is bad, for one reason or another. Again, this links back to the editors' Libertarian "agenda": they are against any form of regulation that impinges on their lives, and as the EU (the EEC's successor) wanted to increase regulation, they were against Brussels.
Meanwhile, the Libertarian agenda saw London (the home of Fleet Street) boom. After the financial crisis, the austerity agenda resulted in a reduction in state spending unprecedented in modern Britain. As the editors had done with the difficult early years of Thatcher, they did the same with Cameron. They instead attacked the Labour Party's record, while making stories like the 2010 student protests, the 2011 riots and the crippling social effects of government policy all a matter of the failings of individual moral responsibility. The plethora of stories about benefit "scroungers", disability fraud and so on are all supplied to provide moral ammunition for the government's austerity agenda and the destruction of Britain's social cohesion.
Thus "British values" had become further skewed towards the "individual" and away from the wider community. When it came to immigration, the agenda set by the editors was to entrench the fear that economic migrants were taking other people's jobs and destroying Britain's sense of identity, regardless of the reality. In this way, while the reader was informed that their "community" was being eradicated, they were also being instigated into animosity towards other ("foreign") parts of their community. Thus communities were being culturally divided by the anti-immigration agenda; society was becoming further and further atomized, split between socially-open and socially-closed communities.

All these themes had a part to play in the "Brexit Agenda". Like the Thatcherites in the Conservative government and the Thatcherite media barons, these are people who are Libertarians at heart. They do not really believe in community or society, but in individual actions. They do not truly believe in "charity" in the traditional sense, and are callous towards the suffering of others. As their ideal is to convert Britain into a state like Singapore, can they even truly be said to be "British", from a cultural or social point of view? Are they, in fact, the real "enemies of the people"?
Along with the special interest groups like Legatum, the IEA, and the ERG group in parliament itself, we see an agenda that has very little of "British values" in the modern understanding of the term. The agenda is about socially turning back the clock well over a hundred years, to a time when Britain had few regulations, little in the way of a safety net, and far fewer human rights. The only countries in the modern world that are comparable with this state of affairs are third world countries or corrupt dictatorships.

The Conservatives, Labour and the SNP: the Tories' cynical strategy of divide and rule

The Conservatives' election strategy has been marked by negative tactics and low politics. This reached a low point with the personal attacks on Ed Miliband the other week, but has not stopped. In spite of the fact that there is little evidence that this is actually having an effect on the polls (and some suggesting it may have had the opposite effect), the attacks on Miliband have continued by major Tory figures.
Cameron seems intent on flogging this particular dead horse. One particularly-telling moment was a Cameron interview with Sky News the day after Fallon's remarks, where Cameron admitted that he didn't know Miliband personally (or really, at all), but still felt justified in making these highly-personal attacks. This is just absurd: the Prime Minister trying to defend making unsavoury personal attacks on a person he barely even knows. The fact that Cameron has to resort to them to make a point, while Miliband simply has to talk about the effect government policies are having, tells you a lot about the character of the two men vying to be Prime Minister after the election.

The wider truth about the Tories is that they would do and say almost anything to have power. Their manifesto was full of ridiculous promises; where the money came from, nobody knew. While all parties are guilty of exaggerating the danger of other parties, the Conservatives' threats at times have bordered on the nonsensical: that they would create "millions" of jobs, and that Labour would destroy "millions" of jobs. Since when do Conservative governments "create" jobs? Only the private companies can do that. The talk of Labour "chaos", which ignores the fact that - prior to the global financial crisis - Labour presided over the longest period of growth in living memory. Yes, there was a crash, but it was a worldwide crash, that cannot simply be blamed on Labour. In any case, the Conservatives' economic policy at the time was even more gung-ho than the then Labour government's. But these facts must be conveniently forgotten to project the fallacy of Conservative competence.

Divide and rule

The Conservative Party is the historic party of the old aristocracy, and the party still rules the UK with the same attitude the Empire had towards it's colonies. These days, with the empire long gone, it feels like the "empire" is just London ruling the other parts of the country like outlying colonies. For those in the Westminster bubble, the rest of the country certainly feels as remote. The country is ran as though it is just an economic extension of the London economy: this explains why London acts as a vampire on the "real" UK beyond the M25. The economic model the UK has had for the past thirty years has been made in London, for the benefit of London. Any beneficial effects on those areas outside of London have been incidental. It's essentially the same economic model as some parts of the Third World.
The only way the electorate can be distracted from this reality is by the Tories creating poisonous false narratives like "strivers" versus "shirkers". The "politics of envy" that the Tories hurl at Labour more accurately reflects how they use the politics of fear to protect their own interests and positions. When you have a lot to lose - like the media barons that support the Tories  - anything that could possibly prevent your own expansion is perceived as a mortal threat.

The Tories have been gradually losing support in Scotland over the last thirty years. The loss of the 1997 election saw the last generation of Tory Scots swept from Westminster, leaving only a vestige of support. The irony was that, after opposing devolution, the Scottish Conservatives found that they could have a larger voice in Holyrood's new, proportional system. The same was true of the SNP. When the nationalists became a minority government in Holyrood, the SNP had to rely on Tory support from time to time to get some bills through parliament. Then, with the collapse of Labour support becoming even more dramatic after the SNP won power outright in the following Holyrood elections. a historic change looked to be taking place. The aftermath of the independence referendum last year confirmed the historic nature of the collapse of Labour support to the benefit of the SNP. The Tories looked on in delight.

As said earlier, the Tories have a track record of doing and saying anything in order to have power. Regarding the national integrity of the UK, this will even extend to happily losing one part of the country if it means having a better control of the rest. For this is the calculation that Cameron and other figures in the government have clearly made. This is, quite literally, "divide and rule".

And yet, the Tories' strategy is at a complete counter to one of main tenets of their existence: the preservation of the UK. While it may be argued by some that it was the Labour party that "gave up" on the empire, it is the Tories who seem happy to give up on the idea of the UK - so long as they think they can rule what is left of it.

While in the election campaign they talk about the dangers of the "chaos" of the SNP somehow having control over Labour and the UK as a whole, at the same time people like George Osborne are talking up the talents of the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon. It is almost as if some Tories want the SNP to do well, regardless of the implications this may have on the wider future of the UK. And yet, while offering more powers to Scotland after the referendum, now they are talking about how Scottish voters' choice will have no effect in Westminster - words that seem almost designed to make the Scots even more angry and disconnected from the decisions in Westminster. This would no doubt suit the long-term aims of the SNP.
One theory doing the rounds is that the Conservatives are somehow hoping to destroy the Labour party in Scotland through the proxy of the SNP. With the simultaneous collapse of the LibDems north of the border, this then gives them a free run as the main "unionist" opposition to the SNP. A plot as nefarious as this couldn't be put past the Tories, regardless of how fanciful the aim. The enemy of my enemy is my friend (until he's the enemy again).

A Game Of Chess

In this light, the Scottish Conservatives may be trying to play a very long game. Meanwhile, the English Conservatives are trying to make Labour - the only party with serious levels of support in each part the union - as the party prepared to "do a deal" with a party (the SNP) that would split the union asunder. As we have already seen, this claim is as nonsensical as it is shamelessly hypocritical and disingenuous.
It would suit both the SNP and the Tories for Labour to be dislodged as "Stewards Of The North". To use a "Game Of Thrones" analogy (apologies to those not in the know) the Tories are playing the Lannisters, who secretly did a deal with the Boltons (the SNP) to take over from the Starks (Labour).

But this is not a game. While Cameron and Osborne play petty politics with Scotland for their own reasons, at the same time they are also playing games with the "insurgents" in British politics, UKIP. The Tories criticise Labour for refusing to rule out a deal with the SNP, but already in the previous parliament, Ukip's agenda forced Cameron into promising an EU referendum in the next parliament. And that was even at a time before UKIP had any MPs. While UKIP are unlikely to get more than a handful of MPs, they have plenty of "soft power" over the Conservatives in terms of the many Euro-sceptic MPs amongst the Tories themselves.
So, assuming that Cameron did get back into power, he would be beholden to the "insurgents" of UKIP on one hand, and powerless to prevent an angry and politically-disconnected Scotland breaking away, on the other. A Cameron second term could conceivably conclude with Scotland breaking up the union and the UK leaving the EU. While these might seem far-fetched scenarios, they would be even less likely if Ed Miliband were Prime Minister. 

To the likes of Cameron, politics is a game of chess, but one he thinks he is much better at than he actually is. His record as Prime Minister and statesman is actually pretty appalling. It sometimes feels like he's doing it for the lack of anything better to do.

David Cameron and the Conservatives' negative 2015 election campaign: are they losing the plot?

Two weeks ago, parliament dissolved for the election campaign, and Cameron and Miliband were preparing for their fate with Jeremy Paxman. I wrote previously about how that week was possibly a week that Cameron would have liked to forget. The PM did not exactly show himself off in his best light, and brought back the negative traits that Cameron and his supporters do their best to hide.

That was two weeks ago, and the following Thursday was dominated by the leaders' debates. Since then (and until a few days ago) the media coverage of Cameron was soft-focus, easy-on-the-eye segments of him visiting somewhere, looking kindly-but-earnest, and being photographed in kindly settings. This culminated in him being photographed with a lamb over the Easter weekend, which was perhaps the most overtly (and sickeningly) reverential photo opportunity yet.
In parallel to that, Ed Miliband and Labour were consistently shown in the mainstream media as hapless and not to be trusted. Even though this clearly flew in face of the conventional view that Miliband did - at worst - a decent job of explaining his platform in the leaders' debate, this "line" kept on being used by many in the media.

This blatant bias gave credence to the view that the media are just as much a part of the "establishment" as those in the ranks of the Conservative party.

However, the Conservatives' negative campaign looked to have stalled their fortunes by the end of the Easter holiday. It wasn't having any noticeable effect on the polls, which were showing the two main parties neck-and-neck. And then Labour turned up the heat a couple of notches.

How to lose the plot in seventy-two hours

The week began to get interesting when Tony Blair made a sudden appearance back in Sedgefield to make a speech on Europe. To an extent, this was Labour taking a risk due to the toxic effect that Blair has on some since the Iraq war. But Blair's speech displayed his statesman-like command of the English language is still a force to marvel, as well as being a devastating put-down on Cameron personally and the Conservatives in general. While Blair could be dismissed as a sign of desperation in the Miliband camp, Blair's message could not. The Conservative response was unconvincing and petty. The tone of that response would become a Conservative trend for the week.

The next day, Labour then announced that they would abolish the right of non-doms' tax privileges. As this policy was clearly a vote-winner, the Tories didn't have a coherent reply. What was even more ironic was that the Financial Times had even supported this change of the law. One of their ministers tried several different arguments against it, changing her "line" with each put-down, to ridiculous effect. The Tories were caught trying to defend the indefensible, as they tried vainly to defend the interests of their wealthy supporters. Labour had - to the Tories' evident surprise - played an absolute blinder, leaving the Conservatives flapping around for a response. It didn't come.

Things went from the sublime to the farcical the following day: Thursday. Defence secretary Michael Fallon then went on the attack about Labour's apparently "chaotic" and dangerous policy on Trident and the nuclear deterrent, going so far as to call Ed Miliband "ruthless" for robbing his brother of the leadership, suggesting that Ed would "stab" Britain in the back the same way he had done to his brother.
This line of attack was as stupid as it was embarrassing. Not only was Fallon blatantly getting his facts wrong about Labour's policy (which was essentially the same as the Conservatives), he was attacking Miliband in a way that was to quickly backfire on him.
Miliband's response to these attacks was a lesson in masterful, polite put-down. By this point in the campaign, Miliband was beginning to look more and more composed, more obviously, naturally "human", and quick to dismiss Tory personal attacks on him as "pathetic". It was clear that most people agreed with him.

To cap it all off, the Tories then decided to postpone their manifesto launch so it didn't clash with Labour's. The average person would conclude that they were scrabbling around for something - anything - to deflect the attention back on to Labour "chaos" versus Conservative "competence".

Only now, the roles had seemed reversed.

In footballing terms, gone from bad to worse for the Tories, by the end of Thurday reading:

Labour 3 - 0 Conservatives
Blair
Miliband
Fallon (o.g.)

On Friday, the Tories were clearly trying to get back in the game by throwing out a few policy ideas (calling them more than "ideas" would be too kind). These included a freeze on rail fares (isn't that a Socialist idea?), and a law that gave employees the right to three days paid "voluntary leave" from their companies.
Both these ideas were quickly dismissed as gimmicks - and according to industry experts, irresponsible ones as that. The Tories had somehow turned their campaign from a well-oiled machine into a farcical joke. No-one was taking anything the Conservatives said very seriously any more.

The Blame Game

The personal attacks, as insiders know, could only have been instigated by Cameron. It was Cameron who used personal attacks in front of 10 Downing Street as his way to start the election campaign. This has been Cameron's line of attack for a very long time, making it all a question of personality. But this is also another sign of the petty baseness and superficiality of the Prime Minister's personality. While it is true that Ed Miliband has not exactly shone in personal terms since becoming Labour leader, it is now also equally clear that the poor image given to him was an unfair misrepresentation.
With the election campaign properly underway, it almost feels as though the "real" Ed (rather than "Red Ed") has suddenly been unveiled, to the Tories astonishment. A wag might suggest it was all a "cunning plan" to lull the Tories into a false sense of security, with Miliband playing a "long game" that would only become clear to everyone right at the last moment. Miliband is far from an obvious statesman, but he is also clearly a decent person who cares about people far more than those in the Conservative party.

Poor Michael Fallon was clearly told to do a job on Thursday and he did it - this was what Miliband himself cleverly alluded to. Cameron is now seen as a petty coward, who attacks his enemies but doesn't have the courage to have a one-on-one debate with a man he thinks is useless, and nor the decency to talk to the real electorate during a campaign to remain as their leader. He would rather spend a day flashing around four corners of the country (if only for a hour or two), hang out in the "Game Of Thrones" set, and then talk to a small gathering of supporters in a huge, empty shed (but pretend he's talking to a large gathering of the masses). As Miliband said, it's pathetic.

Cameron is a man who can't take criticism. He has been seen losing his temper in Westminster when rattled. This is why he lives in a cocoon-like existence, detached from the real Britain of food banks, zero-hour contracts, and thirtysomethings living with their parents because they can't afford to rent a place for themselves (let alone a mortgage). This is the consequence of his "long term economic plan".

It was Cameron who brought in Lynton Crosby as the expert to guide them to victory in 2015. So far, all his strategy has shown is that the "nasty party" are back with a vengeance. They were in hiding all along.

Fundamentally, under the stresses of an election campaign people are now seeing more of the "real" Cameron and the "real" Miliband. People will decide which person they would rather have making decisions about how society works. If it was simply about "the economy" then, yes, the Tories would probably win, but that's an overly-simplistic judgement. "The economy" is a complex idea, with lots of different factors influencing it. This explains why the Tories are not in a better position.

There is too much distrust and uncertainty about how the economy is ran in the UK. Who does it work for? This is the question that Ed Miliband poses.

Politics, the media, and the 2015 general election: the establishment's "dirty tricks"

The Leveson inquiry a few years ago delved into the sordid underbelly of the relationship between politicians, the media and the police. I wrote an article discussing how the media in the UK is in reality more of an oligarchy of individuals whose views are espoused through the mouthpieces of their own newspapers (and - in the case of Rupert Murdoch - media outlets as well).

We talk about a "free press" existing in the UK, but the major national newspapers are owned by what we could easily call "media barons". Murdoch is the most famous, of course; the Australian owns the "Sun" and "The Times", as well as the media (and news) outlet, Sky. The "Daily Mail" is ran day-today by its autocratic editor, Paul Dacre, but has been owned by Lord Rothermere and others for over a hundred years. These are the two most popular newspapers in the UK, both of which are instinctively conservative-leaning (though the "Sun" was more left-leaning back in the 1960s). There is also the "Daily Express", whose aim appears to be to out-do the "Daily Mail" at headline-grabbing scaremongering, and shores up the remainder of the conservative press, albeit with smaller circulation numbers. It is also the only national newspaper to be publicly supportive of UKIP.

"The Daily Telegraph" - casually known as the "Torygraph" - is effectively the editorial mouthpiece of the Barclay brothers, whom are tax avoiders and own the Channel Island of Sark. You'd be hard-pressed to find a newspaper that more symbolizes "the establishment" that this. 

By comparison, the "Mirror" is the most popular left-leaning tabloid, while  the "Guardian" is the newspaper of choice for the "mainstream" liberal-left. Lastly, there is the "Independent", a newspaper that was only established in the 1980s, and is (also with the London "Evening Standard") now owned by the Russian liberal Anglophile, Alexander Lebedev. This shores up the remainder of what could be called the "liberal left" segment of British society.

Fighting against the tide

It is fairly clear from this summary of the media environment in the UK that British newspapers are mainly owned by people who are rich and naturally have conservative beliefs. It can also be said that the most popular newspapers are owned by people who are rich and naturally have conservative beliefs; the same is true of their editors, and many of their journalists. These people have come from privileged backgrounds, have gone to public schools and top-class universities, mainly live in London, and thus have priorities that are completely different from those of ordinary families in the UK.

The problem is this: most people in the UK don't share those views. If they did, then British politics would be much more dominated by the Conservatives that it actually is. In effect, the majority of the British media is controlled by conservatives, and it is their views that are reflected in their newspapers. Anyone who believes that newspapers are there to reflect the views of their readers is living with a dangerously-naive view of the world. 

This point was made clear when Rupert Murdoch answered questions to parliamentary committees, and the Leveson inquiry. There is a clear "line of communication" explaining how a newspaper ought to explain a "story"; this often involves having a headline that reflects the views of the editor/owner (any sane editor matches his view with the view of the owner), and having the facts of the story fit around the headline. This is not "news" in the conventional sense of the word, but "spin" (or propaganda, to use the old-fashioned term).

Now this is nothing surprising, of course. Newspapers are businesses, and thus need to make money: this explains why some of them use sensational (i.e. misleading) techniques to grab readers' attention. But this is only one part of it. If newspaper owners were only there to make money, this would at least be understandable. But many of them are clearly interested in much more than money: being human beings, they crave power as well as financial success. Rupert Murdoch is the easy example to use for this, with his seemingly-insatiable appetite to buy more and more media outlets (and thus more and more influence). 

In this way, it can be argued that newspaper owners, their editors, and their high-flying journalists, are effectively another wing of the "establishment". The difference with the "establishment" in Westminster is that media "wing" of the establishment is un-elected, and (as the many recent scandals have shown) effectively unaccountable. When the Conservative government talked about possibly implementing reforms to hold newspapers to account, they screamed blue murder; as though they had been stabbed in the back by one of their own. And so the sacred "free press" were preserved from statutory intrusion.

Now that the election campaign has got underway for real, the "establishment media" have been using all their "dirty tricks" to undermine the Labour campaign. From the Telegraph's publication of top business leaders backing the Conservatives (really? who'd have thought, given that the newspaper is owned by tax exiles?), to the relentless message by the Telegraph, Mail, and the Sun that Labour is "anti-business". 

In some ways, this election campaign is being played in the media as a repeat of 1992. The Tories use a negative (and narrowly-focused) campaign to scare people against "Labour chaos" and another tax bombshell; at times, it seems the media are "triangulating" their attacks in conjuction with CCHQ. Ed Miliband, while certainly not the most charismatic person in the world, is certainly not the "weirdo" the media make him out to be. In recent days, he has been seen giving interviews and explaining his ideas in a much more natural and straightforward way than before. But this has barely had a mention in the media.

Meanwhile, David Cameron is given a "soft-focus" interviews by the media, and lots of media exposure of him looking either "prime ministerial" at a factory or a building site, or looking fatherly and easy-going when talking to families. The bias to distort the reality is blatant. 

What's worse is that Cameron's real record as a Prime Minster, and that of his government, is one of failure, That was clearly shown in the seven-way debate, where is abjectly failed to defend his record, gave (at best) misleading answers, could only revert to repeating the same negative points, and was (rightly) attacked by the other party leaders. His performance was one of the least convincing of the seven leaders. Yet somehow, polls in the media were showing him as either leading in the performance stakes, or coming a strong second. Who did they ask? 

For these reasons, we can expect more of the same over the coming month: a co-ordinated attack on Miliband a la Kinnock in 1992, from the Conservatives and their media allies. It is for this reason why the London press are now fixated on building-up the threat that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP pose. As Labour look very unlikely to gain a majority, the best method of attack is to go after those who may prop them up, and thus shore up the Tories as a safe "anti-SNP" block against the insurgents north of the wall.

Will it work? Well, it has before. And while no-one is seriously expecting the Tories to get a majority, if they can indirectly depress the Labour vote in Scotland through the SNP, and scare enough English voters from voting Labour, the Tories will have done what they always do: divide and rule. 

And then, post-election the media barons will have another "scapegoat" to threaten their readers with: the "Queen Beyond The Wall"...

 

  

Government in the UK: of the media, for the media, by the media.

The role of the media in Britain has been discussed to death in recent times. The hacking scandal and the long list of celebrities and ordinary families that were the victim to the Murdoch (and other) press' casual attitude to ethics and the law has been the ironic focus of the media itself. Navel-gazing has become the British media's recent obsession.

But this also brings to the surface the role that the Murdoch press and the media in general have in the decision-making process at the governmental level. The UK is not alone in the world in having an influential media, and this is in so many ways a great service to democracy.

But there is also a darker side to this. I wrote a short while ago about "Demarchy", and in that article I talked about something called "Ochliocracy", more commonly called mob rule. Mob rule is also another way of talking about decision-making by interest groups; when governments make their decisions simply based on the reaction to pressures by groups of people with special interests.
In the modern world this includes lobbyists and corporate interests, but in ancient and mediaeval times this was any number of periodic bouts of public hysteria, often engineered by populist demagogues eager for power themselves; in the Roman Empire, this was often how Emperors rose and fell from power; in mediaeval Italy, this was how city-states like Florence changed government; in modern Italy, it was how populist demagogues like Silvio Berlusconi were able to stay in power for so long while allowing the country to fall into financial ruin.

This is how riots start; in a dysfunctional society, this is how government policy is made. The modern term that spin doctors call it is "policy-on-the-hoof", but for successive British governments over the last twenty years, it was one way of trying to maintain their popularity.
The most important way that people in modern society get information is through the media; in Britain, this means news media like "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail"; the first is the most popular tabloid in the country, the second is the most popular "middlebrow" newpaper. As a result, much of the British public obtain their information from these newspapers. The newspapers would reply that no-one is forcing them to buy them, and that whatever viewpoints they share must therefore be reflected by their readers; this may be true.
But there is also another angle to this; by thinking about if the amount of column inches these newspapers spend on dicussing certain issues (such as violent crime, moral issues, celebrity intrigue, Europe, and so on) is a reflection of the relative concerns of their readers. By this measure, what comes first: the chicken or the egg? Do the media spend so many column inches on violent crime to reflect their readers' concerns, or are the readers so concerned about violent crime because they read about it so much in the media? Or is it a combination of both?

What has been proven by surveys is that compared to issues such as the economy and other immediate concerns, Europe is not a major issue for the average person on the street. They do not spend sleepless nights thinking about what bureaucrats in Brussels are doing.
It seems that the editors and journalists of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" do, though. Which brings us back to the point: where do people get their points of views from? If the media are there to reflect the public's concerns, why do some of them spend so many column inches talking about things that the average person has been proven not to be so concerned about?
"The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" are the two most Euro-sceptic newspapers in the country; they are also the two most popular. Of course the editors of these newspapers are entitled to their opinion, but I seriously wonder if their readers would be quite so sceptical of the EU if the editors of those newspapers spent a little more time focusing on what people can do to improve the British economy and less time on how bad the EU is for Britain.
There is a famous quote from Hitler: "If you repeat the lie long enough, people will believe it as truth". The problem with some sections of the media is that their journalists spend too much time on opinionated (and factually inaccurate or misleading) comment, and not enough on furnishing their readers with the ammunition to allow them to think for themselves. But it would be naive to think that this would change: newspapers are a business, after all.

So this means that news coverage by the likes of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" is fuelled by nothing more than profit. In theory (according to free-market proponents), this should mean that newspapers will be in a competition to tell the most factually-enlightening stories. Ha-ha, don't count on it. Newspapers are more often in a competition to sell stories that will either entertain or reinforce to people what they already think. In other words, market forces here act more as a dumbing-down mechanism rather than a way to encourage the spread of information. Who decides what "news" is? The newspapers, of course. In an open society, it is practically impossible to ignore what's happening in the world completely; in other other hand, media outlets are perfectly free to prioritise as they wish.
By "prioritising", newspapers like "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" are deciding for their readers what is important and what is not, which brings us back to their reply that people are perfectly free to choose another newspaper if they don't like what they read.
But that's a simplistic argument. There are not an infinite number of newspapers, and it is true that most people in the UK, like everywhere else, buy it more for casual entertainment. There's nothing wrong with that, as much as those who would consider themselves "intellectual" might think so: it's human nature.

These newspapers know this, of course: that's how they remain so successful. But this media "prioritisation" also has an effect on government. The term "moral panic" is as old as the hills, and one about paedophiles was famously engineered by the tabloids ten years ago or so. The panic about Europe has been in the media for around twenty years, and has been consistently engineered by these same two newspapers. As a result, successive governments have been eager to pander and appease these sentiments.
We saw the partial result of that on Friday morning. Not wishing to seem "weak" on Europe, and eager for good headlines with the key newspapers, David Cameron pandered to the worst elements of the popular media. This is what happens when you allow the narrow interests of a few newspaper editors to dominate the affairs of government. This is the meaning of "Ochliocracy": the subversion of the democratic model through the media, moving from one moral panic to the next.
Alastair Campbell once described "The Daily Mail" as the worst aspects of British society masquerading as the best. In that sense, at least "The Sun" has the decency to be honest about its motives.