The real 'insult to voters' intelligence' is committed every day by the Sun
The party bias of the Sun newspaper in this election has today moved from attacking Ed Miliband to attacking voters who might like his policies.
Its leader column today starts like this:
“Labour’s sham manifesto is an insult to voters’ intelligence.
“We shouldn’t be surprised. For years they have treated the public as fools.
“Yesterday Ed Miliband took this contempt to a new level.”
It goes on like that, running with the Tory line that Labour’s pledge to cut the deficit on the current budget every year should not be believed. But the remarkable twist comes in the conclusion, as the Sun likens Labour to “an incurable drunk claiming to be teetotal while slurring his words through a job interview to manage the off-licence”:
“We can’t currently think of any reason to vote Labour on May 7.
“But if your motivation is that Miliband will run the economy more sensibly than David Cameron, you should Google psychiatrists in your area as soon as possible.“
This studied insult to a big chunk of the electorate, (as well as to anyone with psychiatric problems), is of a piece with the Sun’s political coverage today.
In a two-page spread, themed around the cartoon The Simpsons, (on loan from Sun-owner Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV), the paper equates opposition to George Osborne’s mad push to clear the entire deficit – for both day-to-day and capital spending – and run a surplus by 2020, with being the class dunce.
The spread also ‘rates’ some of Labour’s policies – while leaving out others, like the rail-price freeze and expansion of childcare services – presenting them in a polemical form that effectively tells readers what to think.
I’m always amused when I see the leader columns in the Sun’s stable-mate paper the Times headed as ‘leading articles’, since it calls to mind ‘leading questions’ in court, and well suits columns like this one that seek to drag their readers to a certain opinion like cattle.
The real ‘insult to voters’ intelligence’ is committed every day by the Sun newspaper.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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22 Responses to “Prefer Miliband to Cameron on economics? The Sun says you need a psychiatrist”
littleoddsandpieces
…“Labour’s sham manifesto is an insult to voters’ intelligence.“We shouldn’t be surprised. For years they have treated the public as fools. …
Oh dear, the usual nasty electioneering, when negative campaigning never has worked in the UK.
Labour has already lost and so have the Tories.
Yougov predictions are:
277 Labour
264 Tories
28 Lib Dems
326 MPs minimum threshold for a single party or a couple of parties to form a UK parliament and rule.
TORIES THEREFORE CAN STAY IN POWER
AS A CARETAKER GOVERNMENT
This is a severe hung parliament prediction so Tories can legally just squat in power for next 5 years, with Labour still stuck in opposition.
A BETTER WAY
Tories and Lib Dems could be radically cut in MPs numbers by:
SNP 59 MPs
Plaid Cymru 40 MPs
Mebyon Kernow – 6 MPs in all of Cornwall
TUSC – 113 MPs in England
Class War – about 12 MPs
Socialist GB – about 10 MPs
The Left Unity Party – about 10 MPs
400 MPs majority government is the result,
which includes Labour and ensures austerity cuts do not happen.
Tories and Lib Dems locked out of power, into a minority opposition in the UK parliament, unable to do all the massive cuts as not in government.
HOW POOR VOTER NOW OUTNUMBERS ALL OTHERS /
HOW ENSURE REGISTERED TO VOTE
http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk
Share my website and get a true left alliance in a majority government by bringing out the 75 per cent poor vote lost to all parties right now.
casual agent
The Sun is a national disgrace anyone reading it needs to look past it’s narrow minded blinkered view of the world and beg decent people for forgiveness.Murdoch is making a mug out of you or don’t you you mind that much?…There…that’s as polite as I’m getting
JoeDM
The Sun is quite right.
JoeDM
It’s called democracy !!!
Leon Wolfeson
Funny, most democracies don’t allow foreign ownership of important chunks of their media.
it’s “democracy” when it suits YOU.