The British media have been nauseating this summer in their
treatment of Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for Labour leadership, and now in the
aftermath of his landslide victory are resorting to desperate, sub-tabloid smear
tactics to dirty his name and discredit the newly revitalised and politicised left-leaning element of the UK proletariat. Anyone who has read or knows the premise of Chris Mullin’s
political novel A Very British Coup and
sided with Harry Perkins should be pissed off, worried or both.
Indeed, the latest attempt en masse to undermine Corbyn’s natural and honest appeal
is to scream at him for choosing not to sing the National Anthem at a Battle of
Britain memorial service this week. While it is to be expected of The Sun to claim Corbyn’s choice of
respectful, contemplative silence over joining in a hymn to an enduring albeit
unelected head of state and our warmongering jingoistic past a ‘snub’ to the
Queen, what is more concerning is that BBC Radio 4 Today ran this as their headline news story – and what’s more
featured a less-than-objective discussion on why Jezza didn’t have his top button done up either;
scandal of deceitful type proportions!
Then again, if The Sun
and the Great British Broadcasting Castle are to be sided with, PM David
Cameron’s tweets about Corbyn should be taken seriously too – JC is a ‘threat
to our national security’, to ‘our families’, and if given the chance would
hide shrapnel in your breakfast cereal. Indeed Cameron’s Twitter feed of late
reads like a series of Daily Mail
headlines; we shouldn’t be surprised. But as the Telegraph, the UK’s ‘leading broadsheet’ so eloquently put it yesterday,
the new Labour leader has even gone so far as to ‘appoint a nut job’ as shadow chancellor in mad-as-a-gentleman’s-hat-shop tovarishch,
John McDonnell.
However, we all know newspaper circulation is plummeting in
the UK, by half a million in the last eighteen months as the Guardian reported in April. And while
tabloids and now broadsheets alike resort to attention-grabbing headlines and
dim-witted sensationalist journalism, many people are simply not paying serious
attention any more.
Simultaneously, the rise of uncensored and untampered with
political comment and opinion online – while there are down sides – has
provided a forum, a space for clued-up, free and deep-thinking individuals including
the likes of Owen Jones and Aaron Bastani (Novara Media) to have their voices
heard and to discuss politics with politicians in a manner that allows the
latter to finish their sentences; moreover the Twittersphere, where much of
this debate is communicated, often favours accuracy and the proliferation of
statistics over unruly and simplistic editorial shmuck from those at the behest
of Murdoch and Co (ironically, including David Cameron).
Opinion forming is increasingly happening online away and
apart from traditional print and broadcast media. Corbyn’s huge mandate this summer can in
part be explained by this; so to the realisation of self-determination in Scotland
at referendum last year, and most recently it is important to note that the
broadly-speaking sympathetic reaction to the refugee crisis did not begin at
No.10 Downing Street (which was then barricaded against impending ‘swarms’) or
the offices of The Times in Thomas
More Square. And, of course, there’s the rising awareness of austerity and
related inequalities which has been getting plenty of coverage on the internet as well.
But to return to the Battle of Britain – it was yet another
disaster set within the wider unremitting tragedy of the Second World War. The
young men and women who gave their lives, and were remembered this week, went to their deaths in the hope of protecting families, loved ones and in the
name of freedom. Freedom from a political elite hell-bent on cleansing British (and European) society - if given half a chance; a political elite that also relied heavily on traditional, national print and broadcast media to try and control public opinion (how about that for a loaded paragraph no doubt The Sun
would be keen to exploit).
Nevertheless, putting hyperbole firmly aside, when you wake up tomorrow, walk past your local news
stand and read that Jeremy Corbyn wants the Royal Air Force grounded or National
Treasure Cliff Richard’s gold teeth removed and melted down to create new pound
sterling with which to aid quantitative easing, stop and ask yourself if you’ve
heard oh so much of this before!
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