Should we bail out billionaires? Obviously not. But should billionaire-owned businesses qualify for help? This is an issue raised by your friend and mine, Richard Branson and his long blog ostensibly written to Virgin employees, but very much a publicity counteroffensive rebutting the charges laid at his Caribbean door. I mean, to have effectively laid off your staff and then going cap in hand to the government with a four billion pound fortune to your name was sure to raise an eyebrow or two. I didn't know this, but thanks to his letter to staff I've learned how Virgin is a philanthropic concern whose activities are entirely benign. All profits made by Virgin Care, for instance, are reinvested back into the NHS - or to be more precise, the services the company provides. According to the big cheese himself he's vowed never to draw a dividend from the business. And so the time Virgin sued the NHS in Surrey over its tendering process, the settlement went back into services and not anyone's pockets. Also, contrary to popular belief didn't you know Branson isn't actually a tax exile? Necker Island, his private tropical paradise/resort (yours from $5,000/night for a minimum three day stay) is his place of residence because, well, he likes it there. Fair enough, but domicile status and tax jurisdictions don't care about your affections. A 14-year tax-free holiday from the UK while gorging on the profits produced here, benefiting from the country's infrastructure and enjoying influence with top politicians - perhaps keeping mum on taxes missed might have proven better for brand Branson. Then we have the issue at stake: the position of Virgin Atlantic. As I'm sure readers know, the company attracted negative publicity for foisting eight weeks unpaid leave onto its staff, which was accepted by the unions. This was prior to the announcement of the furlough scheme, so it is peculiar how Virgin is pressing ahead with it. Perhaps VA isn't as philanthropic as advertised. And also we learn Branson has stumped up £200m of his own readies to keep things afloat. His detractors point out this is only a small faction of his paper wealth, but his hoard won't be sat appreciating in the bank (or sitting idly in a discreet account in the Caymans). A lot will be tied up in property and assets, investments, financial products with fixed maturation dates, and so on. We don't know if Branson can get his hands on more money at a drop of a hat and, indeed, not just opening the books but laying bare his portfolio should feature in union plans for company rescue. Secondly, Branson says he's not seeking a bail out for the airline but a commercial loan from the government, for which he's willing to stump up his island as collateral. It goes without saying Branson isn't a firm favourite around these parts for his union-busting antics, those stories, and having parasited off the wealth generated by others for 50 years. But here we have to separate the socially useless - the coupon clipping, profit snorting role Branson plays in his businesses - from the useful: the jobs and infrastructure those businesses support. Apparently, one of the reasons why the government have so far turned down Branson's plea for a loan is because they're not satisfied all avenues of fundraising have been explored. Margaret Hodge put the position more bluntly: sell your island. Yes, though when we're talking about bail outs we should act as if the government has a limited pot of money. As announced a couple of weeks ago, the Bank of England is printing money to fund government spending. The debt this creates not only benefits from ultra low rates of interests, but also doesn't really ever have to be paid back - the government can determine the length of repayment and have it written off. Therefore helping out whatever company doesn't cost the taxpayer a penny, and is also why post-Coronavirus public sector cuts are completely unnecessary from a balance sheet perspective. Nevertheless, because the British state can create money and billionaires can't, as lender of last resort the state has leverage over them. Therefore businesses owned by non-domiciled tax dodgers shouldn't be ruled out of bounds when it comes to support, as per Denmark's tough policy, but this should come with strings attached. Naturally, as the Tory priority is saving capital the conditions so far seen are pathetic, like having furloughing businesses promising to keep jobs open for their staff when normal times return or, as in Virgin's case, making sure all available resources are mustered for their preservation. They will be under pressure not to simply hand cash over when it's asked for, and so have to make a show of conditionality. This is where the opposition might make itself felt when it's not mumbling "now is not the time." Among the strings Labour should call for are significant wage rises to compensate for the present unpaid period, if not outright nationalisation a controlling stake in the business, a suspension of dividend payments, contributions to a climate fund and/or clean air alternatives to aviation fuel, full trade union rights, workers reps on the board and scrutiny of decision-making, and the locking in of bailed out firms to a planned transport strategy - all entirely within the ambit of the platform Keir Starmer stood on during the leadership election. Branson can then bugger off and devote himself entirely to the philanthropic conscience his ilk cultivate after acquiring more cash than they can ever spend. Bail outs for billionaires then? No. But bail outs for their businesses? Certainly. Not just to get us through this system shaking crisis, but to lay the foundations for the better world to come.
Rastan was a beguiling game when I was a nipper, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps I'd bumped into in the arcade at the American Adventure and liked the cut of its hacking and slashing jib, or just fancied trying out life as a barbarian in a loincloth. Whatever the case I snatched it for my jolly old Spectrum as soon as I could and, well, it was a bit pants. Fast forward in time to supposed adulthood I fancied something uncomplicated and fun to pad out the old Master System collection, and happened across Rastan going for cheap. Remembering it got decent reviews at the time I knew there would still be some distance between it and its arcade parent, but it had to improve on the Speccy iteration. Right? Well yes, of course it bloody does. Rastan was a Taito coin-op released in 1987. Heavily "inspired" by Conan the Barbarian, you are cast as the titular hero (or anti-hero, as it turns out) on a quest to slay a dragon and steal its fortune. Quite what our friend of Smaug has done to you in unclear, but it serves as an excuse to make your way through several overworld and underground levels of light platforming, and slicing and dicing of enemy lizard men, chimeras, harpies, and other undesirables and imponderables. Along the way time-limited power ups are available that lessen damage taken from enemies, as well as some nice weapons too. Your sword can be traded up for a mace, a battleaxe, a fireball-shooting chopper, and various potions are dotted about to restore bits of your health or, gasp, take it away. In addition to baddies there are pits to leap over, lava and water to dodge, and traps to avoid. And can you tell what lies at the end of every level? Why, a scrap with a boss of some description. The Master System version for its part does a good job of mimicking the arcade. Its layout differs from the coin-op, presumably to press the value-for-money button, but the core gameplay is exactly the same. Graphically its fine and puts its 8-bit competition on the home micros to shame. Sound-wise, the Master System wasn't blessed with the beefiest of chips but Taito's programmers did an excellent job of turning out atmospheric tunes, which was no mean feat. But the specificity of games lie in their gaminess. Does Rastan play well? Here's where what passed muster in yesteryear wouldn't necessarily do so today. That's one way of saying there are some issues. Issue number one is the stiffness of it all. Making a jump, which is a necessary part of the game, is like working against the grain of some invisible substance. As such, accurate leaping is unnecessarily tricky. This can become a real bind when you get stuck in a small lava/water pit between pillars of rock. You see, wee Rastan is blessed with two sorts of jumps - one a short hop which is pretty useless, and a biggie activated by pressing the jump button and the D-pad up. Here, when you try leaping out of your doom you tend to sail straight over the platform to land down another pit. Not great. Also the momentum to jumping is very limited - it's like you get to a certain point in your leaping arc ... and then you plummet like a stone. Thankfully, being a muscle-bound hard arse there's no damage from big drops - unlike some video game characters. The second is a bane of many an 8-bit game: collision detection. Offing your foes requires they be at the right length from you to fall (or rather explode) at the bite of your blade. Too close and, well, you can't kill 'em. This is particularly annoying later on in the game when you attract the ministrations of giant hornets. It can literally be hovering above Rastan's bonce and you can be thrusting your sword up at it as you please, but our insectile nemesis refuses to die. This gets ridiculous when you get to the boss fights. The enemies have fairly simple and straightforward attack patterns, but just try developing a pattern of your own to get them gone. Half the time it's a matter of luck whether your sword hits them. This is with the exception of the final boss who is fairly easy to dispatch once the routine is learned and deployed. If only all the others were the same. Rastan today is fairly well-remembered, but its home conversions aren't what you'd describe as canonical games. In Master System land there are plenty of slash 'em ups with platform elements, and Rastan is one of the better ones. Nevertheless, its ending does have a nice touch. With the dragon dead and its minions dispersed to the four winds, the local king is effusive with praise and offers you his realm if you take his daughter's hand - who just so happens to love you. Snore. Riffing off Conan again, Rastan declares himself nothing but a thief and slips into the night for further questing. As he didn't take the treasure, it makes you wonder how seriously he takes his thieving, as well as what the point of the game was. Likewise, what's the point of sinking time into this 1988 release some 30-odd years later? From a curiosity point of view, it does demonstrate the Master System could handle decent conversions in the hands of competent programmers, and it holds up very well against competing but similar titles on Nintendo's machine, But culturally, it is a desert. Absent are innovations that have left a trace in the game mechanics meta, apart from - for a while - being the only decent hack 'n' slash platforming experience in the arcades. Very soon after the release, shooting things became the standard for action platformers and swords migrated over to beat 'em ups - above all Sega's Golden Axe, with its own Rastan/Conan inspired player character. And later to one-on-one fighters. All this said, Rastan wasn't bad for the standards of its day. Gamers unused to old stuff would find it hard going, but for the wrinklies it will reactivate the gaming habitus of old and perhaps see their like treat it with a little more patience. If you have something for retro curios, you'll do much better with the Master System than any other home version of the game. Image Credit
When the government acted, after much prompting, to follow other European countries and effectively underwrite businesses and wages, it did so to make sure the relations of production were preserved. Capitalist states are going to protect capitalism, after all. While the basic income idea is once again abroad and has moved into the mainstream, Rishi Sunak's three mini-budgets following the main event maintained workers' dependence on their employers for income, and if their job had gone down the tubes the pathetic and punitive social security system was left to take up the slack. So keeping the wage relation alive was prioritised over keeping actual people alive. And yet, despite the jump in unemployment figures the government's furlough scheme has got some establishment notables hot under the collar. You will recall that the Tories' employers' subsidy sees the government pony up 80% of wages to a maximum of £2,500/month. While there are all sorts of holes in this scheme, effectively workers who are furloughed are on paid leave. Whether the employer decides to shell out the remaining 20% is up to them (for info, the public sector and others in receipt of public funds, like universities, are expected to keep staff on full salary if they apply for the scheme). This, apparently is terrible. At least according to Robert Peston's latest. However, instead of dialling it in he makes a number of interesting points. Before the government scheme was announced, all sorts of businesses of Peston's acquaintance were wracking their brains about innovating their way through the lockdown. But cometh the Sunak, cometh the slack. He suggests many simply gave up because their incomes were guaranteed, which is bad for economic performance and entrepreneurship, right? Well, it all depends. For example, one of the local businesses here in Stoke "innovated" by sacking their 40 staff and operating as a take away - securing the positions of the co-owners but consigning everyone else to the mercies of the DWP. An extreme example perhaps, but innovation can equally be the author of job losses - just ask the history of manufacturing. Interestingly though Peston's alternative is ... a temporary basic income. In all fairness, this has much to recommend it. Assuming it is a reasonable level (Stephen Bush pegs this at £960/month), it would be a vast improvement on the meagre amounts comprising the dole and those workers who don't qualify for any support at all, like working students. But this isn't the reason Peston supports it: a basic income is a better preservative of capitalist relations than the furloughing scheme because, counter intuitively, it does not remove the incentive for work. Whereas there are good, progressive arguments for such an initiative (and, nine times out of ten, I'm in favour of a generous basic income), in Peston's hands it is entirely backward. His recommendation is an invitation for employers to throw many more millions out of work. He has the gall to talk about the atrophying of businesses and the collapse of tax revenue under the present scheme, but what does he expect would happen to income tax receipts if furloughing ends and a £960/month (or less, knowing the Tories) is enacted. Yes, work incentives are preserved alright by a massive crash in living standards. This poses some tough questions for the left when the three month furloughing period expires. Agitating for a basic income in these circumstances will make things much better for workers forced to subsist on social security, but because the labour movement is weak and the state, for the moment, is the employer of last resort, using it to replace the furlough scheme is a means of divesting employers of their responsibilities and foisting hardship onto millions of workers. It's a recipe for playing off one section of workers against another, which probably helps explain why Peston was instinctively attracted to it. Nevertheless, a tricky situation has its opportunities too. Uprating social security to the sums discussed here and the abolition of conditionality are worthy aims the labour movement should support, but likewise unions should be agitating for the retention of the furlough scheme under present circumstances as well, up to and including extending the state guarantee of wages to 100%. This is so employers can't cry costs while taking advantage of the crisis to lay off staff, change terms and conditions in the fallow period, or surreptitiously victimise awkward trade unionists and others whose faces don't fit. The Coronavirus crisis is of no one's making, but a decade of cuts to public services and the looting of the infrastructure, wedded to incompetent government has meant, disproportionately, our class are paying a terrible price in lives lost and livelihoods ruined. Peston's advice is about opposing the basic income to furloughing to heighten competition among employees and weaken our hand, our response on the contrary should be how the two schemes can fit together to build the collective strength of workers. Our people have already paid more than our fair share of the Covid-19 costs. No more. Image Credit
You've seen that report. You've read the coverage and the fall out. And seen what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are going to do about it, and probably have strong opinions about that too. Clearly, obviously, having a party within a party or, as David Osland put it, an HQ within an HQ made for poisonous relationships, a toxic atmos, and studied purposeful incompetence. But all that taken into consideration, what consequences did scabby activity have on Labour's electoral performance in 2017? Were it not for their efforts aiding everyone but the party they worked for, could Labour have won? Might the result have been closer than it already was? Despite his anti-Corbyn axe-grinding, Nick Tyrone's dissection of one of the left's persistent political myths deserves a view - not least because myths are no good for understanding the world and sober assessments of our actions. He argues the idea Labour were two thousand-odd seats from forming a government (which has, over the last couple of years morphed into two thousand votes from victory) is absurd. And it is. Distributed across Tory/Labour marginals that stayed with the blue party, if they all had fallen to Labour we'd still have fewer seats than our opponents. Would that then have made an anti-Tory coalition likely? Not in the slightest, says Nick. He suggests Corbyn would have been hostage to the PLP, and there's no reason to believe the SNP and LibDems would have gone along with it. Indeed, it's certain the yellow party would not have given up their identification of anti-Corbyn campaigning as their route back to the big time (that worked out well). Therefore whatever the shenanigans at HQ, whether money diverted and wasted on super safe seats would have ended up in key marginals the effect was likely to have been slight. Therefore while our disgraced officer corps did and didn't do things, and almost certainly cost the party a few seats here and there, they aren't responsible for a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Because it was never on the cards. This is true enough, but you have to take wider party divisions into account to address this question credibly. The big fallings out in the party, like the failed coup against Corbyn certainly didn't help, but it was the incessant drip, drip of undermining, secret briefing, amplifyied anti-semitism, contrived rows, leaks, referendum manoeuvring and all the rest thanks to the parliamentary party, their media helpers and useful idiots in the ranks who did the real damage. And the evidence is quite clear about this. The consensus among the pol profs is divided parties tend not to win elections, and the data from the US and the UK stacks up. You can add 2019 to that list, certainly. Consider: the Tories were haplessly divided prior to the election, but Boris Johnson demonstrated serious intent to Brexit voters how he was prepared to do anything, including trashing his own party, to get it done. As a result the Tories went into the election united. Labour, on the other hand, did not. And from the punters' point of view, if you can't hold together your own party how are you competent enough to run the country? Did this apply in 2017? Yes, but not to the same degree. Corbyn was an issue on the doors then and, yes, we'd hear quoted back at us not just the lines from the press but also the angles of attack helpfully provided by supposed Labour comrades in the two years previous. However, because Brexit was neutralised as an issue in places that later turned against Labour a lot of Labour voters gave the party the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, the divisive work done helped sap party support in Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Stoke (South), and Walsall (North) by accelerating the long accumulating tendencies that exploded all across previously safe seats in 2019. Additionally, the party attracted many new voters who are now, to all intents and purposes, the new party base. In this context, while internal shenanigans didn't put off new Labour voters in 2017 it certainly helped demobilise older, more traditional sections of our voter coalition: division doesn't alienate all voters equally. Modest losses in seat terms in 2017 nevertheless saw majorities decline elsewhere, setting the party up for its big fall. While this cannot be directly attributed to scabbing at head quarters, they were part of the problem. They enabled the drip drip damage, they provided assistance to core group hostile MPs, they ensured the leaks took place and party machinery clogged up at factionally opportune times. They share responsibility with Tom Watson, Ian Austin, John Mann, and all the other scabs for dragging the party through the mud and damaging its electoral chances. Nevertheless, even when the crimson mist descends one should remain clear sighted. They cost the party seats but not a chance at government, and their collective behaviour definitely ensured our 2019 defeat was worse than it might have been. Yet in our unlikely 2017 counterfactual of their uniting behind Jeremy Corbyn, the media would have run with the same attacks eventually because the stuff used against Corbyn was out there, ready to be spun. It's also worth noting as well that if it wasn't for the appalling polling 18 months of division had bequeathed us that fateful April three years ago Theresa May would never had called an election in the first place. Hindsight and probabilities are all we have to consider opportunities missed and chances thwarted, but one thing's for sure. Whether you think we could have won in 2017 or not, the exposure of the rotten heart of the professional party has shown how unaccountable and powerful the central apparat are and why the project of democratising Labour remains as relevant now as it ever was. Image Credit
Adam Tooze is rapidly establishing himself as the essential commentator on the economic cataclysm the Coronavirus crisis has unleashed. In tonight's TyksySour courtesy of Novara Media, their purple patch continues with an in-depth but entirely accessible discussion about the crash, the ructions in the Eurozone, and how states are financed among other things. Enjoy the video and, as ever, please feel free to support - like all alternative media it exists at the behest of the wisdom of radical crowds.
Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters "should be shot." Vendettas against "Trots" pursued with alacrity while complaints, including anti-semitism charges piled up. Cheering on the Labour Party's opponents in elections. Discussions of who should leak documents. Setting up secret campaigns to funnel monies to favour MPs. Speaking about senior party figures in the most derogatory terms, including suggesting that a young party member with mental health difficulties should "die in a fire". Deliberations over cooking up crises to maximise embarrassment and damage to the leadership. Sabotaging campaign efforts. All this and more can be found in the 800 page document prepared for submission to the EHRC inquiry into Labour's anti-semitism crisis, of which excellent summaries are available here and here. The report is utterly damning, and the response of those named and very publicly shamed equally pathetic. Iain McNicol, the former party General Secretary who was very much an instigator of this appalling behaviour said "The energy and effort that must have been invested in trawling 10,000 emails rather than challenging antisemitism in the party is deeply troubling." Rich coming from someone who, thanks to the documentary evidence provided saw anti-Jewish racism as less a cancer to be zapped and more an opportunity to damage the people he and his team were working against. Sam Matthews, the former Head of Disputes who featured prominently in last year's hatchet job on the Labour Party said this is sour grapes from a defeated faction. That's right, it was Corbynist disappointment in 2019 that forced senior staffers to scab on the party they ran until their departure from the party's employ. The sad truth is none of this stuff shocked me - apart from the laughable incompetence of these people leaving a paper trail that could be used later to expose them. Encountering party staff drunk on their position, having watched careerists up close capitalise on apparat preferment, seeing shenanigans and hearing the stories (the worst of which I haven't and won't be writing about any time soon), being privy to conversations, witnessing stitch ups take place, all this I've encountered as a bag carrier in the bowels of constituency politics, a CLP officer, and an ordinary member in my decade of being in the party. I've also come across kindness, support, commitment, and solidarity. Though it says everything the latter is very much the preserve of the rank-and-file while the crushing fusion of infantilism and psychopathy characterises the party bureaucracy. None of these people who participated in these discussions and made decisions about the party are fit to be members, let alone senior staff in other organisations. One, Emilie Oldknow was, apparently, Keir Starmer's pick for new General Secretary. I think it's safe to say she's now out of the running. What this means for her current senior role in Unison will cause the union something of a headache, but it has certainly put a new spin on the leak of Jonathan Ashworth's anti-Corbyn comments just prior to the election. For those not in the know, they are married to each other. Likewise the position of Patrick Heneghan, who went on to run the so-called People's Vote campaign would raise a few eyebrows subsequently given the role his organisation played in attacking Labour's voter coalition. No one forced our Southside scabs to, well, scab. Yet when this is acknowledged across the party as custom and practice that goes back decades (see Uncle John Golding's tedious but revealing The Hammer of the Left), we're seeing something more than individual failure. This matter is a question of culture and is inseparable from how the party organises itself. Writing about the development of the German Social Democrats a century ago, Robert Michels' Political Parties argued that as organisations became more complex and specialised, so a dedicated bureaucracy forms up with its own offices and set of tasks. Furthermore, office-holding becomes the basis of power rather than the voluntary party and goes on to become the real decision makers in the organisation. Hence his famous term, the iron law of oligarchy. We see this reproduced in the Labour Party in the contemptuous attitudes toward the membership: it was the ordinary dues-paying member who was responsible and accountable to them, and not the other way round. The idea of democratic oversight or accountability was either a joke, or brought our bureaucrats out in a rage of hostility. Therefore those hoping for a neutral, professionalised bureaucracy are going to be disappointed: for as long as democratic determination by the members is kept away from the general secretaryship and regional directorship, the sorts of abuses our dossier details will happen time and again. This, among many other reasons, was why democratisation of the party was vital in the Corbyn era and remains the case. Curiously, our fearless media, previously wall-to-wall with condemnation every time Jeremy Corbyn sneezed without a hanky, have barely covered the leak. Nothing on the Sunday politics shows. Nothing on interviews with senior Labour politicians this morning. We have the Sky News splash, a piece in the Graun, and that's about it. And some wonder why conspiracy theory is so popular. However, the lack of coverage does not mean this is something the party's new leadership can ignore. It's one thing to have party members calling it out, even if it does include high profile backers of Keir Starmer's campaign, but another to have MPs grumbling openly on Twitter about it. Without a doubt, this is an early, and for Keir, an unwelcome test for his unity credentials. This then is Keir Starmer's Falkirk moment, so what is the Labour leader likely to do? I would expect ... very little. Not just because his first week in office has been weak sauce, or that his shadow cabinet appointments left a lot to be desired, but because he has no programme for the party itself. Whatever one thought of Ed Miliband, he used the occasion of Falkirk to neutralise what he perceived as overweening union influence on the party by introducing opt-in political levies for individual affiliated trade unionists, and the three quid supporters' fee. The scandal facing Keir is more fundamental to the party because it touches not on the fiddles of candidate selection but how the apparatus operates - an apparatus the leader not only needs, but also supported him more so than Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey during the contest. He could ignore the systemic nature of the apparat's corruption, and the fact the scab tendency have moved on to pastures new opens up a window for a 'bad apples' argument. Keir's not about to champion the cause for more party democracy that's for sure. What would benefit him, however, is if the party moves immediately to suspend the former officials, including Lord McNicol. Not just because it would placate his support in the party, who are likely to find these revelations as appalling as everyone else, but to show he means business to the right who'll happily undermine him as they did with each of his three predecessors.
Talking to Sophy Ridge yesterday, Keir said now was not the time to ask tough questions of ministers - as if politics is a leisurely pursuit for a better tomorrow. Something that will assist getting an easy ride in the media perhaps, but not help much when it comes to people noticing Labour's existence, let alone winning over hearts and minds. This search for a zone of non-punishment, I think, is going to condition his response to the dossier leak too. Say little, do nothing, wait for the EHRC report, take it on the chin and hope it will all go away in time. Sadly, if Keir can't or refuses to respond properly to a crisis that is entirely within his power to address, the next four years are not going to be a happy time for the Labour Party. Image Credit
Not so much a resurrection but new life for new left wing media products! One wonders if the extended lock down will see a surge in new blogs, new podcasts, new video channels, and new, well, stuff. We'll see! Anyway, new items that have risen to notice this last month are ... 1. COMRADIO (Twitter) 2. Sociosaurus (Twitter) 3. Street Hooker (Twitter) 4. The Benn Society (Twitter) If you know of any new(ish) blogs, podcasts, channels, Facebook pages or whatever that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email, Facebook, or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for blogs etc. that have started within the last 12 months or thereabouts. The new media round up appears hereabouts when there are enough new entrants to justify a post! Image Credit
When you thought Britain's media couldn't get any worse, oops they did it again. Casting our minds back to the last election, you will recall a flouting of impartiality rules, and the gentle back rub the Tories got versus Labour's time on the rack. Time and again as the campaign unfolded broadcast and broadsheet, telly and tabloid practically united to protect the government. And if they were allergic to such crudity, some supposedly of a progressive persuasion found their reasons to delegitimise and condemn Labour's challenge. It worked, it contributed to the noisy antipathy fed back to us time and again on the doors, but it wasn't an episodic thing. Different sections of the media, whether extensions of the Conservative Party or the supposedly liberal worked in concert to make sure Jeremy Corbyn was held to account, while in their turn Theresa May and Boris Johnson were afforded every courtesy. That was then, but what does my bitter bellyaching have to do with now? Understanding why our media are miserably failing in the face of Coronavirus. Consider the case yesterday. 980 hospital deaths were reported (again, remembering the peculiar way figures are compiled these are not the deaths to have taken place in the previous 24 hours), making the UK host of the highest hospital-based fatalities in Europe. And yet, for a full day these figures were hidden away by the news sites most people use and trust. Heading to BBC News meant digging into the live feed - nowhere was it mentioned as a story in its own right. Which was in marked contrast to when Italy's toll peaked a week or so back. Given the choice between this grim toll and Boris Johnson's recovery, they splashed with his discharge from ICU. BBC Breakfast yesterday was similarly cringing, with Stanley Johnson treated as an authority on the government and "Carrie" (not Carrie Symonds) tweeting her support for the Clap for Carers hashtag deemed a newsworthy item. Meanwhile Tom Newton-Dunn, confirming how The Sun's political editorship has, in his hands, become pure grift wittered on about Johnson watching Withnail and I from the comfort of his hospital bed. Almost a thousand people dead and our fearless hacks were busying themselves with trifles. After repeated call outs on Twitter, and the constant drip-drip of PPE shortages our professional chatterers spent pretty much all of Saturday finding their consciences, possibly because someone they respect has made helpful suggestions to spare their considerable blushes. And what do you know, at the very moment of writing today's sad tally of 917 deaths is featured as the BBC's main item. From the start our compliant media have proven indecently reluctant to ask tough questions - with pretty much the sole exception of Channel 4 News and sundry crowd-funded alternative media. Instead, collective hackdom have gone out their way to rubbish critical comments, run stories that legitimise patriotic citizens who've taken to curtain-twitching with alacrity, and amplifying Tory lines such as medical staff not using protective equipment properly, and reckless yoof going about our urban spaces diseasing people with yoga and barbecues. You can understand why some resort to conspiracy theory to explain this embarrassing shit show of coverage. No conspiracy is needed. Hacks like to think and say no one tells them what to write, and to a degree it's true. They don't need to be told. Their employment is thanks to being part of the same networks, having broadly similar backgrounds, shared assumptions about the way the world works and, in the main, a consensus of what is important and okay to say about politics as those who oversee the media's output. And when alternative voices not beholden to the cosy spectrum of polite opinion gain a toehold, out come the knives. The hostility to critical comment within their midst is matched by their herd-like behaviour. A few key players determine the tone and they stick to their paradigm of the permissible, backed up and enforced in the final instance by the editorial office. Their failure is material, cultural, and shows no prospect of changing soon. Which brings us to the Coronavirus coverage. Whether individual decisions or determined from above, the doxa of our media powers on the outbreak is spelled out by Allison Pearson: "The health of Boris Johnson is the health of the body politic and, by extension, the health of the nation itself." Crudely put, but true enough. With a national effort underway their responsibility is to be, well, responsible. By refusing to rock the boat, by happily assisting the push for scapegoats, by not being critical, by privileging puff stories, the Fourth Estate see themselves less an independent voice and more an adjunct of the state, the willing means by which the bio- and necropolitical priorities of Covid-19 management are discharged. Therefore as a voluntary arm of the state and at the disposal of the government, is it that shocking their coverage has proved, well, shocking? The polls, such as they are, favour Johnson for the moment and are likely to for as long as this crisis persists. But there is frustration and anger building in the country at the visible blunders the Tories have made, its initial complacency, the lack of resources for NHS staff, tardiness over testing, and on top of it the farcical policing of the quarantine. Apologies through gritted teeth from Priti Patel won't cut it indefinitely. Discontent can't be held back forever, and when it builds up to critical levels, the media won't so much as articulate it but work to manage it. As they always have done. Media power, however, is not unassailable. Despite the pathetic pleas of The Sun's Dan Wootton to buy a paper to keep journalism going for future generations, Coronavirus quarantine is accelerating the decline of the press and imperilling its institutional strength. Likewise, Corbynism might be over but the movement remains, above all its networks and nascent alternative media. The longer the crisis persists, the steeper the decline in circulation, and the looser its grip on opinion formation, and the more opportunities there are for left messages to cut through. If there are any silver linings to this awful crisis, a speedy collapse of the press's power to frame and disseminate their commonsense is one of them.
In the latest Politics Theory Other, Alex chats to Adam Tooze about the crisis dimensions of the Covid-19 outbreak and what it means for the global balance of power between the United States and China, and divisions within the European Union. When Coronavirus is done and the quarantines disappear, things will not be the same. As always, please help keep the show going by supporting it via here. Not least because you are guaranteed better, more thoughtful consideration of the crisis than in broadcast journalism and the bourgeois press.
