In Britain the Conservatives have recognised this more consistently than
have their opponents, though the left in the Twentieth Century had a
readily demonisable, and readily demonised, target in Margaret Thatcher.
In campaigning attacks the Conservatives have gone for the player, not
the ball, and still have as well a residue of ruling class disdain for
anyone who lies outside either their own charmed circle or beyond the
frontiers of currently dominant narratives and ideology. Even to wear
the ‘wrong’ clothes can provoke a sneer. They have concentrated on
personal attacks on potential rivals, and on presenting a narrative of
their opponents as marginal, untypical, out of touch with the mass of
voters. This story, like the story about markets, liberal economics, and
austerity, has been sustained by the power of ideological carpet
bombing, and the marginalisation of alternatives in the tyranny of
received opinion.
This goes a long way to explaining one of the many curious features of
the 2017 General Election. When the decision to go to the country was
made, the predominant media narrative was of a Labour Party doomed to
virtual extinction, massively behind in the polls, likely to virtually
disappear from parliamentary politics. And if nothing changed, and the
current narrative were both correct and unchallenged, that would be
true. But things do change, choices are made, and the impossible becomes
possible by someone choosing ‘unrealistic’ policies and making
‘unrealistic’ claims and giving ‘out of date’ or (and that’s the
alternative) ‘fantastic’ narratives.
But once campaigning began, something happened which took this dominant
and pervasive account by surprise. Up until then, the prevailing account
of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been of an unrealistic,
extremist, out of touch and old-fashioned.
Once the campaign began, and some account had to be given of the Labour
manifesto, and some reporting on the Labour leader’s speeches, it was
difficult for a predominantly right wing media entirely to ignore
Corbyn, whose values and aims – a simple rejection of austerity on both
moral and economic grounds, a belief in the central importance of
properly funded public services from health to railways, a rejection of a
taxation system which let large corporations off lightly and
prioritized making thing better for the wealthy – suddenly seemed
sensible and modest not just to actual and potential Labour voters, but
to ordinary citizens beyond the left. Corbyn slowly but transformingly
was presented and could be seen as someone who, at last, attacked an
entire system of privilege and inequality and extreme economic
ideologies. He was no longer the impractical leader of an out of date
party, but a champion of public services in health, education, and
transport, services which were valued by ordinary voters, the many not
the few, and a fundamental context for their wellbeing. A manifesto
which had been anticipated as a recipe for disaster became the
prospectus of a party which seemed every day to narrow the gap.
Read more: mThe UK General Election: Tales of the unexpected | Euronews
