Telegraph Runs Free Political Advertising

Normally, advertisements, or what are called “advertising features” or “advertorials”, are items for which newspapers demand corresponding advertising rates. It would be unthinkable to run anything of this nature without extracting the appropriate fee. And to run advertising and pay the promoter of the advert into the bargain, well, that just would not happen. Or would it?

Well, yes it would, if the paper in question were the Maily Telegraph, and the promoter of the advert London’s occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who gets bunged £5,000 a time for his “chicken feed” generating Monday column. Today, Bozza has been allowed to turn that column over to promoting the party whose members include Himself Personally Now.

And which party might that be? The headline and sub-heading leave us in no doubt: “You kip if you want to – but only one party can offer real change ... The Tories will give people the vote they are crying out for, and lead reform of the EU”. Yes, it’s a Conservative PPB masquerading as half-decent punditry. Bozza wants those of his age to be able to vote on the EU, like in 1975.

Sadly, that is where he sells the pass: making that comparison does not show strength, but weakness. I will explain. Harold Wilson enjoyed a Parliamentary majority in 1975, but a slender one. His party was split over the Europe question, rather as the Tories are now. The referendum was a device for allowing both factions to let off steam and campaign for their preferred outcome.

In other words, the 1975 vote – the campaign started with two-thirds of the electorate ready to vote to leave, but ended with two-thirds voting to stay in – was utterly meaningless, except as a device for Wilson to hold the Labour Party together. He claimed to have “renegotiated” the terms earlier agreed by the Tories under Sailor Heath. But that claim was mostly hot air.

So when Bozza tells “There is only one party with any hope of both forming the government of this country and giving the people the debate and the vote we are crying out for – and that is David Cameron’s Conservative Party. There is a chance now for the British Government to lead the reform of the EU”, this is weapons grade bullshit. What he really means is “for God’s sake, vote Tory, or Dave’s toast”.

And the bullpucky extends to his motivation: “We should go into those renegotiations with a clear agenda: to root out the nonsense of the social chapter – the working time directive and the atypical work directive and other job-destroying regulations”. Yeah, all that rotten regulation, eh? Without any of that we could have ourselves, oh I dunno, our very own Turkish mining disaster, more than likely.

The Tel has paid £5,000 for a Tory Party advert. And it’s a total load of crap.