General Election 2017 | Corbyn phobia & Conservatism

Thanks to Tom Scott for creating this image

There's been a lot of talk on Social Media speculating why the Mainstream Press won't back Corbyn. There's was even speculation among the political class whether the left-leaning Guardian think it's possible that a Corbyn led Labour Party can win a General Election, so what's going on?

While no one should underestimate the Mainstream Press's  ability to steer public opinion away from anything remotely radical, I think there's something else going on within people that explains the aversion to an alternative voice. A psychological something so powerful that many feel unable to turn away from the perceived safety of Conservative Party paternalism. 

For large numbers of voters, the Conservative Party seems to act as a kind of universal comfort blanket used to protect those too afraid to allow themselves to think about the malign forces operating behind closed doors organising their lives.  Put simply, it appears to me that too many people are hopelessly happy to leave political affairs to others. It's as if, justice, equality and fairness is non of our business and instead the inately deferential English seek solace in the Daddy-Knows-Best paternalism that Theresa May and the Conservative Party do so well. 

The difficult circumstances people find themselves following the austerity policies of the Conservative Party, rather than causing them to rise up and challenge the system, actually seems to make people cling on even tighter. To the cap-wringing and hopelessly deferential, middle income Tory voter, maybe struggling to run a new business, automatically accepts the decisions "their" Party makes without properly considering the alternative point of view. The way I see it, and despite Jeremy Corbyn closing in on May in the polls, the difficulty the Labour Party still faces, is that any idea, or individual articulating opinions in opposition to the status quo, triggers a knee-jerk reaction that, not only stifles the ideas, it kills rational argument stone dead. 

Whether it's Jeremy Corbyn choosing not to sing God Save the Queen, or more serious issues, like contracting out National Health Services to private business, hiking University Tuition Fees, or Thersa May's Social Care Plan, alternative opinions trigger a kind of phobia that's remains hard for the Labour Party to extinguish. 

If the Labour Party are to be elected in June, it's leadership and their grass-roots supporters need to stick to the arguments, and  I am sure that, day-by-day, the phobic reaction and the aversion to real change in Britain will soften. Only then will the value of Jeremy Corbyn's policies for Britain be acknowledged and more generally accepted by the public, if not the Conservative controlled press. 

More on: Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party

A version of this article was first published in September 2015.

May Polls aren't what they used to be | 2017 General Election

What is Alternative Media

Theresa May's popularity is falling week-on-week according to an opinion poll by YouGov.

 

In the recent UK poll YouGov looked at how people say they would vote in the General Election and compared the results with those collected in the previous week. YouGov's analysis also suggest that the Conservative Party remain way ahead in the opinion polls, but what’s significant is how much the gap between Labour and the Conservatives has shrunk from 23 percentage points to just 13 Sunday to Sunday. 

So what can Theresa do? The usual strategy in these circumstances is to simply wait and trust that The Daily Mail, and the 100 and their ill, to frighten people a little more about Crime and National Security and let the opinion poll gap between Labour and Conservatives should fall naturally back into line.

In the run-up to June 8th General Election we should all keep an eye on the headlines for stuff like:

Theresa May is toughest on crime.

Despite the Conservative Government having cut the money the Police need to fight crime by 20%.

The bulk of the mainstream press will also try to terrify us by pretending that it is only the Conservatives Party that is strong enough of on defense to keep us safe.  

Remember though, that it was them that scrapped our only proper Aircraft Carrier before a new one was built and, at the same time, plans to buy an off-the-shelf nuclear weapon from a foreign country rather that building the UK's own independent nuclear deterrent.

When there's a clear alternative to full-blown capitalism the media-knows-best attitude kicks in and it usually works. It didn't happen so much under Tony Blair's leadership because then the Labour Party was Tory Light and the Murdoch press, as long as it didn't affect his empire too much, appeared to quite like Tony's sanitised version of capitalism. Under Jeremy Corbyn, however, the Labour Party is a very different animal, and represents a genuine and more up-front socialist alternative to the kind of hard-nosed capitalism we have at the moment and, as a consequence, the Labour Party has few powerful friends controlling the media. 

It's not the Labour and Lib-Dem crime and defense policies that terrify me, it's the failure of the press to provide a balanced view of what is really going on in our society and the world for that matter.  There are alternative views out there, but they haven't the reach of a mainstream media who are predominantly owned by self-serving billionaires with a vested interest in maintaining a Conservative Government and it’s dog-eat-dog version of capitalism. Put simply, the media have to prevent  Labour, Lib-Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party from winning power and, above all else, keep a more just and equal society just out of reach of the people.

More on politics

Who owns the media?

Are we Corbyn phobic?

Why the English working class get hooked on voting Tory

What do Conservative fear change?

What is Alternative Media?

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