While Theresa May tries to finalise a deal with the DUP to get herself a Commons majority, and therefore the ability to get a Queen’s Speech passed, the pollsters have been hard at work picking over the bones of last week’s General Election. In the case of YouGov, who were, with Survation, one of the two who got closest to the eventual outcome, they have been looking at the influence of the press on voter behaviour.
And their findings will make grim reading for that larger part of the Fourth Estate which so shamelessly cheered on the Tories, while drenching the Labour leadership in abuse and smears. Yes, they persuaded a significant majority of their readers to back The Blue Team, but the effect was not as in previous elections - Labour gained seats, the Tories lost them, and the press assault failed to destroy Jeremy Corbyn.
Moreover, the news was worst for the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun: while readers of papers like the Mail broke 74-17 for the Tories, with the Express breaking 77-15 and the Telegraph 79-12, the Sun only managed a 59-30 split (the Murdoch Times had fared marginally better, with the Tories coming out on top 58-24). All that knocking copy, and 30% of readers still voted Labour. And it gets worse.
While 76% of Mail readers turned out to vote, and 78% of Express readers did likewise, with both Telegraph and Times recording an 82% score, the Sun managed a miserable 48%. That means a majority of Sun readers did not bother voting. What is the point of having control of a multi-million reader megaphone when more than half of those on the receiving end of the broadcast take no notice of it?
It then gets worse still: the Sun is now openly contradicting all the sycophantic talking-up it gave the Tories before polling day, typical being Jane Moore, another obscenely overpaid pundit trying to make sense of a world that is rapidly leaving her and her pals behind, telling “critically, [Theresa May] simply came across as robotic, remote, a teensy bit dreary and horribly out of touch with modern Britain … In short, she’s an Ovaltiney Prime Minister living in a chai latte age”. Christ on a bike, where is she coming from?
The kinds of voters Ms Moore and her pals are trying to get through to will (a) not know what the hell Ovaltine is - and nor will they care - and (b) just because Sun hacks and pundits, with their unfeasibly large pay packets, drink chai latte, it doesn’t follow that those who can take or leave newspaper opinion do the same.
It gets worse still as non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn claims an exclusive for “THERESA May’s Tory party is on death row and could face ‘years of opposition’, a sacked minister has declared … Blue collar Tory MP Rob Halfon has insisted the Conservatives must make dramatic changes – including switching their name to the ‘The Workers Party’”. It wasn’t on death row before election day, was it?
The Sun is just condemning itself to even greater irrelevance. Its pundits don’t understand their target audience, many of its readers refuse to vote the way they’re told, and half of them can’t be arsed voting in the first place. A well-merited oblivion beckons.
The Tories as "The Workers Party"?!
ReplyDeleteHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
What's yet funnier is the stupid bastard is actually SERIOUS.
Still, he can always ask the mining communities for their opinion. Plus those millions who had their lives destroyed by Tory and New Labour deindustrialisation and the mortgage scam.
Yet another illustration of how politicians have come to believe they can govern by slogans and public relations bullshit. Whereas Joe Citizen - no matter how long it takes - comes to judge the situation by how he and his family have been/will be treated by the ruling system. Eventually bribery of a narrow band of the population (such as the south east) fails to work. Throw in the looming demise of mainstream media propaganda methods and you get the current outcome.
The Tories and New Labour have now painted themselves into a corner by the policies they inflicted. Now they are presented with history's invoice. They will, of course, expect the rest of us to pay for it.
If the Labour Party wins the next election it is likely they will pursue a mildly social democratic form of government. That might, just, be enough to halt the corrupt destruction of British society. But in the long run it will take a great deal more than that to restore fairness and decency. It will take decades.
Meanwhile, what desperate damage will the Tories and their allies do and what lies will they tell in their reactions? More "patriotic" wars? More mealy mouthed hypocrisy? More background sabotage from scumbags like Mathew Hancock and Hilary Benn? More immorality from their corrupt press and broadcast news?
Watch this space. And never say you weren't warned.
And there's an even more serious problem (for the tabloids). Younger voters simply don't read them.
ReplyDeleteIn past times a majority of Sun 'readers' voted Labour. The Sun's key influence was that this was a smaller majority on polling day than when the election was called.
ReplyDeleteThis majority was cited justify the claim the Murdoch doesn't have excessive influence.
I've worked in the same place for 30 years using a mess room shared by approximately 100 people.
ReplyDeleteAbout 10 years ago there always used to be a stack of papers left in the mess room, mainly the Sun for people to read and pass the time. Some of the papers were even days old.
For the past 3 years, I think I have seen a newspaper in the mess room probably 5 times. If I ever did find a Sun lying around I would put it straight in the bin where it belongs.
Proabably sums up the newspapers influence nowadays.
It's the Russians I tell you! The Russians! It's always the RUSSIANS!
ReplyDeleteSee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8kIPiyhw4A from 3:07. (And that was back in the 1960s!).
The establishment hated director Tony Richardson for good reason. He knew what a gang of corrupt shitheads they are and exposed them in his films.
Funny how it was the Russians then, as it's the Russians now. Plus China. Plus North Korea. Plus Iran. Plus Al Qadea. Plus ISIS. Plus the Taliban. Plus the IRA. Plus Jeremy Corbyn. Plus John McDonnell. Plus Dianne Abbot. Plus....er, hang on a minute......I'll think of another enemy.......
And where's John McTernan when you need him? I know he helped lose three elections in a row in Australia, USA and Britain, but he was a supporter of Blair and Brown and we all know how successful he was for THEM.
What's wrong with you people that you can't see the woods for the woods?
If you live in London, and you have a look at what people are reading on the tube / buss it is normally the freebie Metro in the morning and then the freebie evening standard in the evening. There are a few city boys who read City AM but I struggle to see anybody reading that free paper now that I no longer work in the square mile.
ReplyDeleteAs metro is distributed country wide I suspect more people pick up the freebie copies of the metro than those that buy newspapers. The only problem is that Metro is owned by Daily Mail and where Metro does give an opinion it is similar in nature to the Daily Mail. So I can see Ducra ordering more editorial pieces in the Metro going forward. And The Evening Standard is now editied by Tory Boy Gideon so that will be pro Tory for the foreseeable future.
At my tube stop, the only newspapers I can see being sold by the newsagent in the morning are
Daily Mail
Sun
local paper
Either the others are sold out by 8am or he does not get a supply.
The people I notice who buy those papers all appear to be in the 50+ age range.
However looking at people viewing content on their mobile devices from what I have seen that seems to be the Daily Mail app more than anything else
So they are still getting their reach into people who don't but their papers. The saving grace is that when I see people using the Daily Mail app, men seem to be reading the sports articles, and women the lifestlye articles. But I can see Ducra getting the app changed to put editorial articles placed more prominently.
As for the Sun being more traditional labour, I remember reading that Murdoch switched to the Torys because they where going to allow him to purchase The Times and he wanted that more than the Sun.
So I think Durca and Murdoch are already holding committe meetings to counter this, and when they are ready they will order TM to resig and then the replacement will order another election.