British Politics: Election Diary WEEK 5

Election Diary Week 5 is reprinted from Left Horizons UK

by John Pickard

In the week 4 diary, we mentioned the unreliability of opinion polls. It is highly likely that the main parties will have their own private polling organisations, and particularly the Tories, given their better resources and connections. Despite the public statements that almost suggest it’s already in the bag for Johnson, behind the scenes there is some wobble in the Tories’ confidence.

How else can we explain the warning issued by special-adviser-in-chief Dominic Cummings in his personal blog last week (November 27)? “If Boris doesn’t get a majority” Cummings writes, “then Corbyn will take control of No10 on Friday 13th in alliance with Sturgeon plus the Liberal Democrats…” This was all in bold in the original.

He then goes on, “You will see many polls in the coming days. Some will say Boris will win. Trust me, as someone who has worked on lots of campaigns, things are MUCH tighter than they seem and there is a very real possibility of a hung parliament.”

The Tories will be dismayed and Labour heartened by the surge in voter registrations in the period running up to the closing date. Labour party members everywhere and the party officially, put a lot of time and effort into getting the greatest-possible number of registrations. The Tories did absolutely nothing…because they want a low rate of registration and a low turnout, in the knowledge that it is the most disadvantaged and least organised parts of the population – overwhelming ‘natural Labour supporters – who are most likely to miss out.

Record number of recent voter registrations

But official government figures show a surge in registrations even greater than there was in 2017. History never repeats itself, of course, and Labour may not have such an overwhelming lead among younger voters as it did two and a half years ago, but there is still a clear advantage for Labour among younger voters. More than three million registered to vote in the month leading up to the closing date on November 26^th.

According to official figures, two thirds of these were from under 35 year-olds, among whom, according to YouGov, Labour commands something like 46-50 per cent of the vote, compared to the Tories’ 25 per cent. Of the new registrations, an incredible 660,000 came on the final day. This is good news for Labour, although not a reason for complacency, because being on the voting register is not a guarantee of a positive vote.

We reported last week on the bias shown in the BBC coverage of the election campaign. There have now been two incidents of film footage of Johnson being tampered with, in order to put him in a better light.

Then the intervention of the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, gave the BBC the opportunity to give an anti-Corbyn story top news billing in all TV and radio broadcasts for the best part of two days. But, on the other hand, the BBC coverage of the British Council of Muslims complaints about Tory Islamophobia was not given anything like the same publicity.

Neither was the letter to Jeremy Corbyn from a Director of the UK Rabbinical Executive Board, on behalf of the United European Jews organisation (UEJ). The letter completely exonerated Corbyn of anti-Semitism and saying that they “reject and condemn in no uncertain terms” the recent comments in the media claiming that the “majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the prospect of a Labour government. The letter went on to say that the media commentary – ultimately from Rabbi Mirvis – “does not represent the views of mainstream Chareidi [Orthodox] Jews who live in the UK.”

Those in glass houses….

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, threw his meagre weight behind Rabbi Mirvis and that was also well-reported. In reply, Gus John, a well respected author, resigned from the Church of England’s national advisory panel on ethnic minorities. “…those who occupy houses clad with stained glass”, he complained, “…should perhaps be a trifle more careful when they join others in throwing stones”. He specifically criticised Welby’s response the Rabbi Mirvis, “as if he were the pope speaking for all British Jews…secular Jews and those who do not hold with the views of Jews for Labour are considered not to matter.”

The mid-week highlight of the BBC News Corbyn-bashing was the Andrew Neil interview with Jeremy Corbyn. Neil, a long-standing hatchet-man for Rupert Murdoch and well-known for his strident right-wing views, asked the Labour leader to apologise for the charges (from the Chief Rabbi) that Corbyn rejected. Neil, oblivious to the absurdity of asking someone to apologise for something they were denying, was very persistent. Of course the BBC and Tory newspapers gleefully lapped this up…in the knowledge that Johnson wouldn’t face the same treatment, because was desperately avoiding being interviewed by the same hack.

Leaders’ debate on climate change, Channel 4.

Unsurprisingly, neither the Tories nor the Brexit Party were prepared to be represented in a debate about climate change because both are still in state of semi- or outright denial about climate change in the first place. They have nothing to offer on the issue at all and that fact will not be lost on the big majority of young voters for whom climate change is a central issue. Farage and Johnson were substituted on the stage set by melting blocks of ice. 

For Lib-Dem leader Jo Swinson, the issue revolved around staying in the EU; for Nicola Sturgeon no sentence left her mouth without the words ‘Scotland’ or ‘Scottish’ at least three times in it, but Jeremy Corbyn, once again, showed a grasp of the issues – and the detail – that is completely lost on his main opponent, Absentee Johnson. 

A new green policy is absolutely essential and Left Horizons has carried many articles on this question, but it also needs an associated economic and industrial policy that puts it into effect. Labour is quite correctly opposed to ‘green’ policies that put the onus for change on the living standards of ordinary working class people.

The most traumatic event of the week, of course, was the terror attack on Friday at London Bridge. Sadly, it is almost a routine event to have a terror attack just prior to an election. As would have been expected from the most vicious and right-wing Tory leadership in generations, Johnson and his leading ministers attempted to make some political capital out of the murder of two young people by Usman Khan. He was quickly knocked down by the father of one of the victims and Johnson’s pompous and inaccurate attempt to blame the Labour government for Khan’s early release from prison was somewhat punctured by the revelation that among the heroic people who tackled Khan there were a number of immigrants and one man who was himself out on early release. Johnson and the Tories did not profit from the event, much to their disappointment.

Most vicious press campaign in living memory

Once this election campaign in done and dusted, there may well be academic investigations of the role played by the press and the BBC in rubbishing Corbyn. In living memory, there has not been a campaign of lies, disinformation and vilification like the one directed at Jeremy Corbyn.

The last time there was an academic study of media bias, it was done by the Media Reform Coalition, in conjunction with Birkbeck University, London, in 2016. This study, of 465 online articles and 40 prime time news bulletins, was not in an election period, but it examined news over the ten-day period following the coordinated resignations of Labour shadow cabinet members and the beginning of the failed coup against Corbyn. The study found (from its executive summary):

·Twice as much airtime given to critical, rather than supportive voices

·Huge imbalance in favour of issues pushed by Corbyn critics on early evening BBC and ITV bulletins –especially pronounced in headline stories

·A strong tendency within BBC main evening news for reporters to use pejorative language when describing Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters

·Domination of views opposed to the Labour leadership in all but one of the online outlets sampled, and across both left and right-leaning titles

·Online-only news sites relatively balanced in their coverage, as well as the BBC online

Labour can only rely on its members, nothing else

In the main body of the report, the study concluded, “The BBC evening news bulletins gave nearly twice as much unchallenged airtime to sources critical of Corbyn compared to those that supported him (an imbalance that was not matched by ITV which gave considerably more equal attention to opposing voices).” (Emphasis in the original)

The bias unearthed in this academic study has been multiplied ten-fold in the past few weeks, but we cannot claim to be surprised at this. It was anticipated that the media, including the BBC, would fight hard and dirty against the election of a Corbyn government. Whatever the outcome of the election, one lesson that Labour Party members must learn is this: that Labour can never rely upon ‘fairness’ in the media owned and controlled by the ruling elite. The party can only rely on the massed ranks of its members, reaching down into every workplace and community to fight for socialist policies in the interests of working class people. No-one else will do it for them. 

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