Where the claim originated cannot be told with complete certainty, but it is most likely that the idea of a race too close to call was to distract Tories from inconvenient ideas like changing leader yet again. That means someone not unadjacent to Rishi Sunak pitched the dead cat as a means of giving him another couple of days free of speculation and other turbulence.
That the right-leaning press, and to her shame Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC, ended up looking mightily foolish for being taken in by this drivel, should have caused them to stop and think when the next amateurishly concocted Look Over There was, with the certainty of night following day, waved before the assembled hacks and pundits. But that is to reckon without the desperation.
Here we encounter not just the desperate wanting for the Tories to be doing better - as if - but also the hollowing out of journalistic resources over the years. Investigative journalism is mostly out of the question; shovelling it on is the name of the game. Even the Mail titles, best resourced of all, only do the investigative stuff when it wants to dig up dirt on its current targets.
And so it came to pass yesterday that the Murdoch Times slung the next in what is going to be a long and tedious procession of dead cats on the table. “UK heading for a hung Parliament, says Sunak … PM warns Starmer would be ‘propped up’ in No10”. Ah, the old “frighten voters shitless with the spectre of the SNP” ploy. This is, to no surprise, total tosh.
But for the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, this is a credible line to take. Hence today’s paper telling readers “Sunak: Election race is closer than polls show” (you don’t capitalise after a colon, Tel people. That howler wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t binned all those subs).
But enough. The one result that shows this dead cat is another dud is the by-election in Blackpool South. Labour did not only win the seat from the Tories, they achieved a swing of over 26%. This is not just up there with the kinds of swings achieved by Labour in the run-up to the 1997 General Election, but beyond them. And we know what happened to the Tories in 1997.
Another recent by-election that shows the Hung Parliament dead cat to be a phoney is that in Mid Bedfordshire, where (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries scored a majority of over 24,500 in 2019, only for it to be overturned by Labour. This was a solidly safe Tory seat. It had returned a Tory MP since Alan Lennox-Boyd took it from the old Liberal Party in 1931.
The whole idea of trying to extrapolate from local election results to predict a General Election outcome is what Sir Humphrey would have called “brave”. It might also be termed “unwise”. Add to that the potential for tactical voting against the Tories from an electorate that knows it’s been screwed, and you get results like Tiverton and Honiton, where the Lib Dems achieved a swing of almost 30% to take the seat. The Tories are facing wipeout.
And that will happen no matter how many dead cats are deployed. That is all.
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6 comments:
Toryism will not be "wiped out" at the next general election.
The blue faction will be replaced by the red faction. Nothing more.
There will be an intial sense of relief. Then some minor tinkering. Then a return to the same old far right racist tory shite. It will be accompanied by repeated YahBoo garbage in the HoC. There will probably be yet another umpteenth war ordered by Wall Street and the Pentagon; Starmer/Reeves will forehead knuckle and do as they're told.
You'll see.
Incidentally, Kuenssberg isn't "taken in" by this filth. She's an intrinsic part of the media-wide propaganda unit that helps promote it. It is only necessary to consult her previous "work" and her background. She is an utter fraud, a bought-and-paid-for tory foghorn.
As per usual above , inevitably. Change the monomania for a minute and you might have summat to say....
Hanging Parliament- Whilst medieval style punishments would be fitting I reckon 15/20 yrs somewhere remote (?) followed by a lifetime of Profumo style penance. Proceeds of crime re any assets.
16:37.
The truth tends to be solid.
Peripherals tend to be inconsequential. Noise for noise sake, nothing more.
Hence corporate media hysteria and "controversy". Plus the usual diet of lies, propaganda and hypocrisy. A soap opera of far right drivel and mediocrity.
You're not quite Gideon Falter but you ARE a zealot dude.
Have you considered medication. 💊
02:34.
Gosh. At that hour. Now that's what I call zealotry.
R U still not OK Hun?
'Zealot' or not, Orwell, were he still with us, would recognise, from his own writings, the current attempt to create a 'reality' that exists only inside the heads of Corporate leaders and their political stooges. Whether we like it or not, accept it or not, a large and growing number of people buy into this fantasy construct as it's easier to do that than get their heads around the idea that, to misquote mr Lydon - 'ever feel you bin had'..
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