Theresa May has not yet resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. But as far as our free and fearless press is concerned, she is yesterday’s news, and they are now looking to anoint a successor. As so often with those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet, it is the Murdoch mafiosi who lead the way, and their choice for Tory leader has already been decided. It will surprise no-one.
It has been decided by those on the 13th floor of the Baby Shard bunker that the next PM should be London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, thus demonstrating that the Murdoch goons are incapable of seeing the world outside their hermetically sealed bubble. They think Bozza is electable, the Lobby thinks he is electable, their pals think he is electable. Therefore he must be electable.
The thought that Bozza is a congenital liar, a serial philanderer, terminally inept, unable to get his mind round such elementary concepts as budgeting and money being a finite commodity which you can’t just spray up the wall, and not even slightly popular outside the M25, as well as less popular than is assumed within it, is not allowed to enter.
So the word has gone out to talk him up, and this has been done in two very obvious ways, firstly through sycophantic articles in papers like the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, and secondly through new media outlets who know which side their bread is buttered.
This last brings us to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, who know that when Rebekah Brooks calls and orders them to jump, their only question is to ask how high. That The Great Guido is ready to do the bidding of the Murdoch mafiosi was demonstrated by their lame puff piece for TalkRADIO’s TV aspirations earlier this week, which should have been marked as advertorial.
That post included “[Murdoch] is convinced that where he went wrong with the [Sky News] was that it was too middle of the road and boring. Why, he asks, did he lose £20 million-a-year with Sky News UK and make billions-a-year with Fox USA? See Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia to get an idea of the more opinionated news channel he perhaps has in mind. A more lively broadcaster would do much better than the old Sky News”.
Sky News Australia is a nailed-on purveyor of racist bigotry, especially Islamophobia. That is what the Fawkes rabble mean by “lively”. That’s how high they jump for Rebekah. So today’s “Mercer: We Have To Pick Someone Who Wins - That’s Boris” is entirely predictable. As is the detail: “Johnny Mercer formally announced on Peston that he wouldn’t be running - and gave a ringing endorsement of Boris Johnson instead”.
There was more: “there has been a big softening of attitudes towards Boris among many longtime ‘anyone but Boris’ Tories, he has been publicly courting the ‘One Nation’ caucus, even Ruth Davidson has now said she can work with him. Panicking Tory MPs are watching their party’s catastrophic slide in the polls and desperately looking around for a winner, many are coming to the same conclusion as Mercer”. Good doggies!
On top of that is a gratuitous and gushing article in today’s Sun about Bozza’s Islington house being for sale. The headline tells readers what to think: “ON THE MOVE … Boris Johnson puts £4m family home on the market as he plots move to 10 Downing Street … The Tory leadership hopeful could formally launch his campaign in days”.
The totally superfluous detail just keeps on coming. “He's put up his 3,000sq ft property in Islington, North London, up for sale. It has five floors and comes with a private roof terrace with fantastic views … The home was also used for Brexit strategy meetings with allies David Davis and Michael Gove”. Then comes more reader thought direction.
“Boris revealed last week he WILL run to be Tory leader when Mrs May finally steps down … He’s already the bookies' favourite and grassroots say they are behind him too … Labour members in a poll this week said he would be the Tory they most feared coming up against in an election”. That means Rupe and Rebekah are backing Bozza.
And with all that dirt safely locked away in the safe, he’ll do just what they say if he’s allowed to get his hands on the levers of power. Which means bending the rules to allow TalkRADIO to morph into Fox News Channel UK, for starters.
In exchange, Bozza gets the Murdoch propaganda machine behind him. The devil’s deal that so many have done before him. Be afraid, voters. Be very afraid.
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1 comment:
As Paul Simon once upon a time wrote "silence like a cancer grows" so the omerta around all things Murdoch helps his cancer spread to infest democracies all around the globe.
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