Corporate and Establishment media desperate to make this election about one thing – every Labour MP must refuse to dance to their tune
The Tories are desperate to make this a single-issue election. As a result, their allies on every single ‘mainstream’ media platform are performing every imaginable contortion to make every interview with a Labour MP or spokesperson all about it – and every single Labour MP must refuse to play their game.
“At last we get to go to the people with our radical agenda for change”
The excellent Laura Pidcock gave an object lesson in how to do that yesterday. In spite of appallingly ill-mannered conduct by her interviewer, Pidcock persistently dragged the interview back to the real issues and the real point.
Pidcock refused to dance to the Establishment tune and kept bringing the discussion back to the blight inflicted by the Tories on this country – and what kind of country do people want to live in for the next five years, even the next fifty:
Sadly, not every Labour MP facing the cameras has done the same so far.
Every Labour MP – and every Labour campaigner – needs to ‘get the memo‘: refuse to talk about the one thing our enemies are desperate to talk about – and insist on talking about what really affects the lives of tens of millions of people in this country. And if they can’t manage to do it graciously, simply bluntly refuse – and then go back to the real issues anyway.
Pidcock’s campaign manager Ben Sellers summed up why:
Labour’s outstanding vision and policy platform is beyond the wit and ability of the Tories to match – and the minor parties could not hope to deliver even if they wanted to.
Only Labour represents what the people of this country are really crying out for – and to play by the Establishment’s rules and game plan is to fail them.
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Pidcock did well in that interview …. but please stop the constant whining ” In spite of appallingly ill-mannered conduct by her interviewer” … it isn’t grown up and it won’t win an election : there was nothing particularly ill-mannered about the interview, and she, as a competent interviewee, wasn’t prevented from getting over her point of view.
In essence I agree, rh. Nowt particularly rude or ill-mannered about that interview.
But there WILL be those interviewers with the attitude about them. All MP’s being interviewed from now on will need to take the ‘Barry Gardiner’ approach, no matter who the interviewer, or their attitude.
It’s said the best form of defence is attack , so they ALL need to get on the front foot from beginning to end.
Milne & co ought to pull from the screen/radio anyone having allowed themselves to be roasted for the duration, if needs be.
You are absolutely right about the Barry Gardiner approach Toffee. Our MPs are there to be interviewed , not talked at, talked over or insulted. They need to have self respect and politely stop the interviewers in their tracks if they cross the line.
Jeez, Toffee! We’re in agreement!
My comment about ‘whining’ is preciselty that : get the communicators on the air and train the others rather than bellyaching.
As has been said here before – the antisemism scam, for instance, wouldn’t have been stopped by better rebuttals – but it might have given some of the media pause before piling in with the next line from the BoD playbook. But what did we have 9 times out of 10? An apology for displaying less despicable attitudes than the average. Great tactics!
The interviewer was not particularly well mannered either. People now seem to accept that it is the norm for interviews to be conducted in a hostile and aggressive manner in order to point score rather than pose serious probing questions to enable policies to be debated fully.
It’s nothing new. Remember Robin Day – and the cabinet member doing a strop in response?
What is new, rather, is the number of Mps who, unlike Pidcock, can’t get on the front foot, the insulation of the Westminster/Whitehall bubble in generating its own taken-for-granted world view and the intimidation of the BBC (Can you imagine a modern equivalent of TW3 now?)
It’s because nowadays anyone it seems who’s in the public eye see their job as a means to a celebrity end. They know a good way to raise their profile when they see one. Sick of being bit players, they fancy a share of the limelight, too.
Hence Kirsty Wark/Jo Coburn/Cathy Newman/Krishnan G, Rachel Riley and football referees, for instance!
Yeah, if only there was some kind of switch or some way to change the channel so we weren’t forced to watch all that celebrity pap…
Truth to tell I’m just lucky – I’m one of the few people who are Ant- AND Dec-negative.
Natural immunity is such a blessing.
So let me get this straight…the ‘line’ for the General Election for all Labour MPs , and presumably Labour canvassers on the doorstep too, is to simply refuse to discuss Brexit – and Labour’s strange confused position on it – and instead simply offer up our promises on re-nationalisation, and funding the NHS, police, education , etc ?
What happens when a savvy media questioner (like Andrew Neil) or savvy voter on the doorstep, points out that INSIDE the neoliberal EU very many of our key promises cannot be carried out, and the EU budget restriction of a maximum 3% deficit will rule out Labour pursuing its full spending programme ? No good waffling then – or denying that most of the Shadow Cabinet have publicly announced that Labour is now a ‘Remain and Second Referendum Party’ – and that the current EU membership is the ‘best deal on offer’ !
This ‘denial of Brexit’ nonsense might impose a group think embargo on Party members grasping the nonsense of our Brexit position – but it will not fool our heartland Labour, Leave-voting working class potential voters . Labour is sleep-walking into an electoral disaster – and too many Left wingers here are blindly going along with this fantasy that Brexit can be ignored.
Absolutely correct.
On top of the 3% spending restriction mentioned by jpenney, the EU free movement of capital scuppers any serious anti-austerity programme including NHS improvements, since the money needed to fund it will fly abroad when corporations and wealthy individuals quail at the necessary sharp increase in progressive taxation and take their funds abroad.
The Unlimited Labour Supply of the EU free movement of persons will annihilate the Green New Deal’s aim of boosting domestic employment since any serious programme of public works will simply suck in workers from the continent. By the same token public procurement cannot be used to boost British employment since the relevant EU legislation forbids nationality discrimination.
The EU Liberalisation Directives will absolutely prevent nationalisation of the five sectors covered by them – rail, mail, telecommunications, gas and electricity. Outside those sectors, firms from other Member States nonetheless have an action before our courts if they wish to argue that the government is not acting with “proportionality” by nationalising. These companies would likely be granted interim injunctions to prevent nationalisation until full cases are heard, gumming up Labour’s programme.
Politically it is scarcely feasible to accomplish other essential but more contentious nationalisations such as banks and construction without first nationalising the “obvious” sectors of the classic utilities, so the POLITICAL impact of EU law is actually to outlaw ALL major nationalisations.
I too therefore am not at all optimistic that attempts to paint the EU as irrelevant to Labour’s plans will stack up.
RH, Toffee, that was my thought! i shall take the small earthquake that you are in agreement as a straw in the wind that we are going to unite and get the tories out and JC in.
It’s NOT a brexit election.
Those making it so; or even attempting to make it so are NOT socialist.
True. It will be the Tories (see Johnson at PMQs today). But Labour will have to respond – as Corbyn did before moving on.
Well done Laura.
Rule of thumb in #GE2019: every time a media hack interviewer starts obssessing about the EU, change subject to a pressing bread and butter class issue. stop privatisation of NHS, scrap tuition fees, green new deal, job creating investment in neglected regions etc etc.
Oh, and FAO Laura…
PLEASE stop dropping your ‘Tees’ at the end of the word(s)
It’s Austerity’ Not austeri-ee
And ‘Toverty’ NOT ‘pover-ee’
Says me – who can’t even spell ‘Poverty’ properly, first time 🙄
I’m not sure Scourers are the best people to go criticising the quirks of others’ regional pronunciation! 😀
Scourer? I’m more of a brillo pad! 😀
Fucking auto-correct! I’m turning that menace off right now!
I had to turn off spellchecker.
Every time I typed ‘boris’ it came out ‘gobshite’.
The Toffee
Every time I type in Everton it comes up 0
Boom Boom
😂
It’s the Chinese keybird ‘flu, that’s all. Stop yer moaning, it’s not fatal.
Bit of an epidemic this year apparently.
I’ve had the jab 🙂
@Doug
https://media3.giphy.com/media/91R8pMtPnGzXG/source.gif
The Toffee
Might have to refer this to my lawyers
Hadaway & Schite
I’m going to be pretty blunt here, but anyway, here goes:
for me, I’ll probably be up all night watching as the results came in but if I do fall asleep I do know that waking up on 13 December 2019 we will either rejoicing as a nation with the early Christmas pressie and Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister in No. 10 at the Helm of a Socialist government;
or, we face hell – somewhere I don’t want to be!
Yeah, on Friday the 13th!
Well, she was almost denied that. Thanks to Pidcock’s skill and tenacity she managed to promote her party’s policies against the ‘ill-mannered’ and aggressive interviewer. Please give her praise where it is deserved!
I complained to Channel 4 news for the constant interruption for Laura and the complete lack of challenge for the cheap and nasty Tory party spokesman
Not going to hold my breath for a change from MSM, but maybe if enough of us hammer them consistently then we might at least force them to even it up a bit
Strapline for GE No 3
The Labour party is the least anti semitic party in the country if not Western Europe,
If I want to fight any form of racism, not least anti semitism then I join JC and the Labour party
Fuck me pink
Just watched Jess Phillip’s do the day job for once,
Bodes well for campaign, come on lads and lasses get into them
Got to hand it to her. She was righteous and funny, too!
Bodes well for campaign AND for government.
‘Got to hand it to her.’
What? The cyanide capsule?
The General Election has just been called – It’s time for real change.
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1189276879292960768
Wow, great video!
Watching PMQ’s and about three or four people are dressed as the Anti-Smurf.
Swinson’s one and the others are nearby so I assume she’s getting married this afternoon and they’re her bridesmaids and they came to the HoC straight from Wetherspoon’s.
Is Skwawky in love with Laura Pidcock?
Isn’t everyone? 💘
Grenfell commemoration speeches – mealy-mouthed, sanctimonious, self-exculpatory, written and re-written by PR experts and focus-grouped up the wazoo by the Tories to ensure Blowjob doesn’t go off script and play a bum note.
Makes me want to vomit.
Survivors still not housed despite donations that would have bought every one of them a house even at London prices – all pissed away on opportunists getting rich providing temporary accommodation at Ritz prices.
A fucking year and nothing done.
Good point. There is a notable preference in these situations for looking for someone to blame rather than actually taking preventative measures and dealing with necessities for the victims.
I guess its cheaper.
There is a notable preference in these situations for shifting attention away from those responsible for cutting corners and dicing with poorer people’s lives, paying themselves obscene salaries in the process.
Trying to blame it on the Fire Service is just beneath contempt. A perfect example of why Corbyn is just the (comparative) revolution this country needs!
Who the heck is that bell end reporter? That’s not journalism.
Two and a half years, not a year, obviously.
Everything but time takes longer to get done at my age, as it apparently does for Tory governments.
timfrom, I don’t “blame it on the Fire Service” but I do think the officer in charge at the location, seeing the speed with which the fire raced up and around the outside, should have recognised the need to evacuate the building urgently.
That speed of spread meant the fire was totally out of control and the “stay put” advice should have been reversed the minute the impossibility of saving the building was understood.
Emergency switchboards could have called back residents who’d raised the alarm and those residents could have passed the new order to evacuate on to their neighbours.
This isn’t the wisdom of hindsight, it’s what I saw and wrote in real time on the night as I watched the way the cladding provided both the fuel and the air gap ‘chimney’ that created the draught that gave the fire extra oxygen, made it hotter & fiercer and directed it up and around the walls like a series of blowlamps.
The principle is well understood by engineers.
Just love that face as he turned away at the end of the interview. Classic, what would be called in our family a “face like a slapped arse”.
The no deal is off the table by voting Labour. Boris knew that his deal was to be exposed through scrutiny and this why he withdrew it. A new deal or remain can only be delivered by Labour. Let’s ensure that Boris deal is confined to his ditch. Halloween is here.
I hope Labour will have that facility that it had last time whereby you could donate to a particular candidate that needs your money and is worthy of it.
I hope that someone will stand up better to Labour’s nuclear mafia this time. Last time, the part about nuclear weapons offered absolutely nothing and could have been written by ‘Mushroom Cloud’ May herself.
Tony, that’s a VERY interesting thought. I hadn’t even been aware that directed donations had ever been possible.
If I could specify that the decision on how my contributions would be spent was for Corbyn or some other individual I admired to make – instead of ‘the management’ – I’d never even have considered cancelling my standing order.
I’d probably have doubled or trebled my donation in fact, knowing it would be spent how I would wish.
I wonder how many other members think that way?
Knowing who’s really pulling in the funding would also remove the temptation for certain MP’s to believe themselves and their opinions to be of more value to Labour – or more popular with the public – than they actually are.
Interesting fact grenade to lob into a deselection debate too I expect 🙂 🙂
I think it’s a BRILLIANT idea and I wish I’d thought of it.
What actually happened was that the Labour Party published on its website a list of its candidates and then you could expand on a particular one and donate if you wished.
Well, that was handy because there were plenty of Labour candidates that I had absolutely no wish to help.
Where does all this pessimism from the Right Wing media and the polls come from? Labour has upwards of three hundred thousand ordinary members so, despite the PLP traitors who continue to asslick the Tories and their rich supporters, Labour continues to be an exceptionally healthy alternative to all the various toxic Parties, i.e. Tories, of course, Fib Dems, UKIP (do they still exist?), BREXIT (who are they anyway) and so on and so forth! So, what’s going on? All this ‘Labour can’t win’ shite sounds very much like desperation to me! All that has to happen now is for every Leftist in these Islands of ours to concentrate on one thing and that is getting Labour in! Of course winning a vote does not a Socialist alternative make but winning a vote and then maintaining the Socialist battle which includes laying down positive conditions for the resurgence of militant Trades Unionism, laying down clear plans for Parliament to become an institution of the people and not remain as a moribund carcass and stunted and hollow democratic place of old fashioned theatre and archaic rules controlled by the Rich and Powerful, laying down positive plans for the resurgence of Nationalisation which includes the adoption of genuine democracy for all workers in the various Service and Industries which hav3e been stolen from us, plans for doing away with private Landlords and building what were once called Council Houses which are genuinely controlled by tenants collectives, one could go on for there is so much to do but the bottom line is win the General Election with Xs on bits of paper but don’t just go home! Stay on the streets,celebrate the victory as noisily, as messily and for as long as it takes, thus making sure that every Labour MP stays solid and stays Socialist and if they don’t, remove them as swifty and as efficiently as possible and get an MP who will fight hard for a Socialist Society!
That “interviewer” was a 1st class pr1ck.
ITV announce Head-to Head debate between Boris and Jeremy (no Swinson or Farage) will take place on the November 19th.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50268753