Campaigning ahead of a general election is a hazardous time for high-profile Labour politicians who might easily be provoked by the UK’s dominant Conservative-supporting newspapers. Any hint of potential volatility makes them a ready-made target. What is known as a political ‘hatchet job’ has even greater potency given the expanding reach of the Tory commentariat.
Targets for the Conservative-supporting newspapers
Identifying weak spots in the defences of an opposing political party is standard practice in pre-election planning. Sleaze and sex scandals, past or present, are a regular pitfall, but some politicians have the misfortune to become a possible victim well before the start of a campaign. They remain vulnerable all the way to polling day and are in danger of becoming a casualty in a media feeding frenzy that can suddenly destabilise the leadership and harm their party’s electoral prospects. An unexpected turn of events, or the unwelcome resurrection of an earlier embarrassing episode, is all it takes to trigger a damaging furore.
In recent decades far more Labour than Conservative politicians have been derailed without warning once an election is in the offing. Sometimes their vulnerability had been flagged up in advance. Their misfortune was to suddenly find themselves under the relentless focus of the news media and to see their party losing control of its campaign agenda. Perhaps they were purposely provoked or possibly caught out by what might have been dismissed as an innocuous slip-up had it not happened during an election build-up.
A glaring imbalance between Labour and Conservative in the way the news media responds is a direct result of the overwhelming firepower that can be marshalled by Tory strategists and then followed through on their behalf by correspondents, columnists and commentators who write for the UK’s dominant Conservative-supporting newspapers and who increasingly broadcast and promote themselves on social media.
Political imbalance extends far beyond newspapers
Print titles which back the Conservatives, or lean distinctly to the right, command around 80% of the circulation. Sales of national dailies currently average around three million a day, a mere shadow of the 15 million or so sold in the 1980s. But falling circulations and the declining impact of the printed press has been equalled, if not exceeded, by the reach of websites and social media, a growth in podcasts, and the expanding output of independent television and radio channels.
While the shrinking print readership of Tory stalwarts such as the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and The Sun continues to remain the highest among the middle-aged and elderly, the reach of their journalism – and hence their political influence – is far greater than daily sales might suggest. For years newspaper publishers have been investing heavily in websites, video sharing platforms such as YouTube, and now increasingly in radio stations and other audio-visual services.
Views expressed in print, either in opinion pieces or leading articles, gain a new and far younger audience online, on radio and television, and via podcasts. Mainstream news channels such as BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky have switched far more of their output from in-depth reporting to less-costly studio discussions and two-way conversations, hence the ever-greater demand for politically aware and media savvy interviewees.
Contributors from the right easily exceed those from the left. A long decline in the influence of the wider labour and trade union movement has been accompanied by a comparable loss of funding for think tanks and websites that lean to the left. Starved of resources and influence – and without the platform and income provided by the Tory press – there is a dearth of commentators ready or able to challenge the predominance of Tory-inclined talking heads.
Firepower of Tory commentariat keeps Labour on back foot
Of particular concern to Labour tacticians is the way the storylines of right-wing newspapers such as the Daily Mail influence the news agenda of the BBC and other mainstream broadcasters. Newsgathering resources of newspaper publishers have diminished in recent years, but their coverage – and especially their editorial stance on the controversies of the day – continues to command attention and can all too often determine the direction of the daily news narrative.
With so much of the commentariat on their side, a targeted Tory attack can be all embracing and deadly for Labour. These storylines benefit from a high-profile on social media and once they start trending online, rival news organisations find them hard to ignore.
From the start of 2024 the Labour leader Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves began paring back the party’s commitments. They were anxious to soften the impact of policy pledges in the full knowledge that unless they took pre-emptive action, they could find their election promises unravelling the closer it got to polling day. They knew full well from previous election calamities how the sheer intensity of a wall-to-wall onslaught orchestrated by Conservative headquarters and backed by the Tory tabloids had shredded Labour policies in the past.
Much of the pre-election skirmishing in late 2023 and early 2024 revolved around a twin strategy of trying to undermine Starmer’s credibility and authority and to destabilise Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner.
Starmer’s previous role as Director of Public Prosecutions and his knighthood had left him open to attack. A long list of prosecutions and trials in which he was, or was not, involved provided fertile territory for Conservative spin doctors and investigative journalists. They were on the hunt for evidence of poor decision making or legal misjudgement. Having seemingly failed to unearth storylines that could cause him lasting damage, much of the focus shifted to Rayner.
Hot pursuit of Angela Rayner played on her ‘volatility’
Here the terrain was more promising. Rayner had built her political reputation on being a fearsome parliamentarian, eager to stand up for herself against Conservative ministers, only too ready to accuse them of a cover-up if they had refused to own up to indiscretions or come clean about past failings. Her card was marked by Conservative columnists and commentators after she was heard at a Labour conference fringe meeting in 2021 accusing the Tories of being ‘a bunch of scum’. The gloves were off.
Researchers employed by Conservative publisher and author, Lord Ashcroft, set to work, delving into her past. His unauthorised biography, Red Queen? published in late February, raised questions about the sale of her former council house and potential liability for capital gains tax.
Serialisation in The Mail on Sunday (25 February 2024) was launched with a front-page splash: ‘Hypocrite Rayner’s £48k profit on council house sale’. Despite her much-repeated insistence that she had done ‘absolutely nothing wrong’, and that this was a ‘non-story manufactured’ by the Conservatives to smear her, the Tory press was in hot pursuit, determined to keep questions about the credibility of Rayner’s conduct high up in the headlines.
Rayner was proud of her back history as a teenage single mother and former care worker but what exercised investigative reporters was the minutiae surrounding the purchase and sale of her former council house. Day after day she was subjected to damaging disclosures delivered with flair and ingenuity. The dominant Tory commentariat is well versed in the art of character assassination which they deliver with shameless superiority.
Storylines can be repeated time and again. All that is needed is a fresh quote from a senior Conservative politician, perhaps a demand for an inquiry by the parliamentary authorities or calls for a fresh investigation by the police. If all else fails, they can always fall back on a tired old favourite of winding up an attack on the BBC for its ‘bias’ in having ignored the latest press ‘exclusive’.
Their all-out assault did the trick. In mid-April, Greater Manchester Police said it would re-assess information about possible breaches of electoral law. Rayner promised to stand down as deputy leader if she was found to have committed a criminal offence.
Rayner’s Tory ‘scum’ attack a verbal Prescott ‘punch’
Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Benn, Neil Kinnock all had to endure years of newspaper hostility. Jeremy Corbyn’s reputation as Labour leader was well and truly trashed ahead of the party’s disastrous defeat in the 2019 general election. In their vilification of Corbyn, newspaper journalists were able to draw on a treasure trove of stories and photographs dating back 30 years.
Kinnock’s trials and tribulations came to a head in the aftermath of a mass rally in Sheffield a week before polling day in the 1992 general election. His arrival on stage was reminiscent of a 1960s pop concert, punching his fists together as he kept repeating his opening line: “We’re all right”. His attempt to match the razzmatazz of an American presidential convention backfired spectacularly. Political commentary in the Tory press accused the Labour leader of being overconfident and triumphalist. In later years Kinnock acknowledged that he had destroyed the statesmanlike image he wanted to portray.
Although Kinnock was haunted by his conviction that a rush of blood to the head had cost him victory in the 1992 election, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott not only survived but thrived on the reaction to his exchange of blows with an egg-throwing protester before a rally in North Wales in the 2001 general election. He delivered the first punch, a left jab to the face.
Initially there was consternation within the Labour camp but most of the headlines next day were of a light-hearted, jokey nature. At his morning news conference, a deft approach from Prime Minister Tony Blair did the trick: “John is John, and he has got very, very great strengths…[laughter]…not least in his left arm [renewed laughter].”
Well before polling day Rayner had to walk the same political tightrope. Columnists and diarists have remarked on her readiness to talk off the cuff; they sense a ‘volatility’ that could spell danger. Daily Telegraph columnist Gordon Rayner suggested (29 March 2024) her description of the Tories as ‘scum’ was the verbal equivalent of Prescott’s punch. In an already eventful life, well before polling day, she had been forced to face perhaps her toughest political challenge: Tory tormentors determined to try to deliver a knock-out blow.
Immediately after Rishi Sunak announced a snap general election for 4 July, Conservative newspapers were quick to remind their readers about Rayner’s precarious position, awaiting the outcome of fresh police inquiries. Within less than a week she was in the clear: Greater Manchester Police said that after “a thorough, carefully considered and proportionate investigation” no further action would be taken, as was the case with Stockport Council and HM Revenue and Customs. She had weathered a political storm generated in large part by the Tory press whose dogged pursuit had been a salutary pre-election reminder of the persistence and flair of Labour’s traditional foe.
General Election 2024: The Media and the Messengers is due out on 1 July and will be available on Amazon. The book is edited by John Mair, Andrew Beck, and John Ryley.
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