Ill Met By Gaslight

Reality, for many out there on the right, either in the Tory party or among their cheerleaders in our free and fearless press, really is a state of mind. It is a state whose existence they are most unwilling to admit. While an increasing part of the electorate realise just how far they’ve been taken for mugs, the gaslighting is merely cranked up further. Now it’s getting silly.

Gaslighting can talk up the elite's preference ...

Rishi Sunak, too weak to stamp any kind of authority on his party, has caved to the rabid Brexiteer death cult out there on the far right by allowing Suella Braverman not only to remain as Home Secretary, but also waste taxpayer funds taking her press and broadcasting pals - but not the BBC, Mirror or Guardian, you understand - on a client journalism jolly to Rwanda.

Here, she has fed lines to those at the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph (“so impressed by the … homes being built for migrants deported from the UK … she wanted the name of their interior designer”), and the Mail on Sunday (“SUELLA: I’LL SEND BOAT MIGRANTS TO RWANDA BY SUMMER”), revealing the press’ creepy personality cultism.

It began with “Boris”, then moved to “Nadine” and “Priti”. Now we have “Rishi” and “Suella”. And, talking of “Boris”, our disgraced now former alleged Prime Minister, we have the flight from reality infecting Tory constituency associations to the extent that they are willing to deselect MPs who were insufficiently loyal to a lying, wasteful narcissist who cares only for himself.

... while viciously dumping on its targets ...

So much swallowing of the Kool-Aid, so willing to support someone who has single handedly screwed up the UK so badly that the damage will take decades to repair, and still ready to contemplate Bozo doing a Lazarus and returning to high office. This has also been facilitated by the press, with the Tel claiming “Bombshell dossier ‘will clear Johnson over parties’”.

As befits a title trading on its brand while the idea of it indulging in investigative journalism is now a distant memory, the Tel has just been fed the story by Bozo’s pals and has duly applied enough hedging and quote marks to stop it looking even more foolish when the whole thing falls flat. But we do learn that the former PM has a six-strong legal team. And we’re paying.

Jolllies to Rwanda? Legal bills for someone who just trousered £5 million in speaking fees? One might have thought that voters would recoil from such abuses, but that thought would have been misplaced: those groups who claim to be hot on apparent misuse of public funds, like the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance, have not said boo about any of it. Because they support the Tories.

... manufacturing stories out of, well, nothing ...

But opinion poll ratings are still dire for the Tories, with Labour posting leads which would see them into power with the kind of overall majority not seen since the days of the 1931 National Government. So that’s all right, then, isn’t it? Sadly not: we have an opposition so scared of that same press establishment that it dare not peep out of turn for fear of angering them.

Worse, when the flag drops and the General Election campaign begins in earnest, the accumulated dirt that the press has on Keir Starmer and his pals will be ruthlessly and indeed viciously expended in pursuit of a Tory victory, not least the presence in the background of Peter Mandelson, a hate figure of the Fourth Estate from the Blair days. And there will be more.

Labour’s legal pursuit of those it accuses of leaking to the press and TV will be used to ridicule Starmer. The presence of some MPs on picket lines will be exploited, anything suggesting the party is still dealing with complaints of anti-Semitism will be front and centre, while the presence of Ed Miliband will see that same press indulging in a little anti-Semitism of its own to smear him.

... and unleashing hate campaigns. Just for fun

And this level of gaslighting would not be maintained unless those doing it were not confident in their pursuit of one desired result: a Tory victory next year. But look at Labour’s poll leads, you might respond. Look at the ineptitude of Sunak and his ministers. Look at the evasion, the flat-out and easily rumbled lying (pace Oliver Dowden on this morning’s politics shows).

To that, the response is straightforward: you think the Tories are going to lose, and lose badly, but think on. The gaslighting already got a majority of voters - albeit a slim one - to back taking the UK out of the EU, a move which is slowly but inexorably impoverishing us. It also got Bozo a General Election victory that his rank dishonesty and crashing ineptitude did not merit.

It also got many voters to believe that a lifetime anti-racist was in fact a raving anti-Semite (he wasn’t, and isn’t). Moreover, it allowed the establishment to blame its ills on migrants (who had nothing to do with those ills), a mythical other “elite” (ditto), something called WOKE which those doing the gaslighting would have trouble even defining (ditto), and a sports commentator (ditto).

Gaslighting has been all too effective, and not in a good way. So it will be deployed again and again by the real elite. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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