What would the Sun do if this story was about Jeremy Corbyn?
These are the times that try men’s souls.
Claims the prime minister placed his honourable member in the mouth of a dead pig’s head while a student at Oxford, are like manna from heaven for the tabloid press.
All things being equal, Lord Ashcroft’s claims, published in today’s Daily Mail, would (to mix animal metaphors) be milked for all they are worth by a newspaper like the Sun.
But for Rupert Murdoch’s flagship red-top, some animals are more equal than others.
For while the Sun delighted in running cartoons about Ed Miliband every day for the last five years, never missing a chance to ridicule the Labour party leader, his rival David Cameron has been largely spared the same treatment.
Now the paper is faced with a choice.
Will the Sun cover the pig’s head claims as if the ‘private parts’ in question belonged to a Labour rather than Tory minister?
Put simply: what would the Sun do if this story was about Jeremy Corbyn?
Already the paper has begun cartooning Miliband’s replacement – including over his love life, decades after events took place.
How can it justify leaving a target as fat as this go by?
The Sun’s websites have started the bidding today in typical style. Now the question is:
Will the Sun put #piggate on its front page tomorrow?
Will there be giant headline puns and mock-up photos and cartoons?
Or will the paper lay bare its party bias, and make a joke of its claim to equal opportunity irreverence?
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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34 Responses to “Will the Sun put #piggate on its front page tomorrow?”
PHIL THOMAS
Is this the best you can do ? No wonder the LEFT is in disarray.
Selohesra
And there was me thinking you’d be writing article condemning the Mail as you usually do
NHSGP
They can rework the headline. Jezter for Jizzer. 🙂
jj
Why would the article be #Piggate? There was no ‘gate’ involved, really scraping the barrel with this article!
David Lindsay
We have been here before with David Cameron’s and his supporters’ definition of normal behaviour. For example, it was laughed off when he left his small children down the pub. He was no undergraduate then. He was the Prime Minister.
But in no other country or party would necrophile bestiality be treated in that way. Of British Tories, however, we just expect this kind of thing. And neither the BBC nor Sky News will even mention it in their paper reviews, instead dropping the mass circulation newspaper that revealed it.
Both candidates for the Conservative Leadership during this Parliament, one of whom is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while another is at least nominally the Mayor of London, are also members of the club of which this is the initiation ritual.
But remember, it is Jeremy Corbyn who is a weirdo from a subculture that bears no resemblance to mainstream society. Isn’t it?