It’s becoming harder and harder for any British PM to state that the British are not part of the war in Ukraine, Martin Jay writes.
To understand how the British media works and what’s behind the decisions it takes you don’t have to be very bright at all. In fact, you can be really quite dim and still get it, it’s really that simple. Gone are the days when a Brit would buy a paper, perhaps in the 70s and 80s as he or she wanted to be led by smart people who have strong views about given subjects – and stuck to those principles – the media in the UK has shifted to a more basic model: being led itself by popularity. Newspaper editors in the UK are not interested in being smart, having prescient views which they share with us, or even being right. About anything. The new model is really all about gauging early on what popular opinion will be on a given subject and then following the trend. And so, no need to scratch your head and agonise over why the British press is starting to take a more cynical, sceptical view on the war against Russia – by starting to point out to readers that the West’s sanctions are in fact only punishing the West’s citizens and hardly affecting humble Russians at all – as is the case recently, which was kicked off by The Sun newspaper. The tabloid listed all of the items of food, as well as energy which UK citizens were paying through the nose for and made a comparison to Russia’s. This might seem trivial, or even remedial journalism, but it’s a fundamental point which needs making, which, until now has not been voiced by the more highbrow broadsheet journalists who have been aware of the nuances of so-called Russian sanctions but have not really known how to go about writing such a piece.
And so, now with energy prices about to double – and some say triple in January – food becoming more expensive than most people could even imagine and a winter coming which will certainly claim a few victims who freeze to death, it’s becoming harder and harder for any British PM to state that the British are not part of the war in Ukraine. Comparisons before to previous wars which Britain has been in, where lives were lost will soon become apt in the coming weeks of a new prime minister’s term in Downing Street but Dim Lizzie and her press team will hope to steer journalists towards the narrative of departing Boris who said Britain had to stick it out. And buy a kettle.
It’s probably too late though. Newspaper editors and their proprietors will be very aware of the suffering of people in Britain and want very much to sympathise with them and not to be seen to be part of the elitist Twiddly Dee shite hawks telling us to eat less and go to sleep with all your clothes on and just get on with it. The article in The Sun, a tabloid which one doesn’t normally associate with erudite journalism – certainly not international – is a hint of things to come. With the new model of popularity-based journalism at its very core, the rest will follow like dumb sheep heading into the pen. The media in the UK is ready to keep on milking the war in Ukraine for clicks by following the masses and their moronic understanding of what’s going on there; it’s just going to change its perspective and focus on the suffering of the British public.
But Liz Truss will be challenged a new a dichotomy of logic which the media will encompass. Truss is probably the dimmest PM the country has ever had. And even if she is seen by Conservative plotters as a fall guy who will be replaced by Boris in two years’ time, she is going to have a very hard time as Prime Minister in the UK, simply due to this mindset about fighting Russia in the Ukraine. She seems to have a sympathetic take on those who will be struggling in the new economy but it is the author’s view that once in office, she will fire anyone who takes a more pragmatic view about talking peace with Putin and winding down the war in Ukraine. Coupled with any zealous token of intelligence, she will not join the dots up and admit that the decision to go to war in the first place was hurried, passionate and foolish. She will not see that, according to a recent report by Bloomberg, that 60 percent of British companies are going to go under this year, which will have an egregious effect on an economy already in freefall and which big media outside of the UK are presently struggling to accept is still a G7 player. Many of her quick fix policies will have some effect though and journalists will be obliged to report on the successes. But it will be the insidious failure of her to grasp world politics and a new world order which is no longer unipolar which will be her downfall. Her tax policies are not well though through. They are not designed to be effective for very long before even the humblest business hack will see the fatal flaws and how much they are really going to cost. You might have thought Tony Blair was a British PM who redefined Downing Street as a stinking cesspit of gimmick and foibles. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Liz Truss has only one prayer which is that the British press will be kind to her as the economy implodes, rioting and strikes become everyday news items, crime goes through the roof as police spend most of their time learning a gay dance routine while their paymasters blow the canteen kitty on repainting the squad cars in LGBT colours and people quite quickly grasp that our new leader doesn’t really have any solutions. Count the number of days which pass before she gives her first anti-Putin speech. And count the number of hours which pass before journalists push the cold steel blade in and twist.
