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Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

It's not the Tories alone but the mainstream media that they are in bed with, which has an overwhelmingly right wing/neoliberal bias. The stories of Rupert Murdoch's influence on our politics are not exaggerated.

The last time Labour secured an election victory on the back of a Tory government was when Tony Blair got into bed with the media and played hard ball with PR and spin, all the way back in 1997.

I've no idea what Starmer's strategy is but it seems to be successfully keeping the media's attention on the current government's incompetence.

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I don't think Sunak is incompetent, I just think he has his own agenda to enrich himself and his cronies at the expense of the country.

Just look at how Shell and BP got new oil licenses right after they signed massive outsourcing contracts with Infosys, his in-laws business.

Or the way that Tory party donors made millions inflating the prices of PPE purchase during the Covid crisis. Tory peer Baroness Mone still hasn't faced any legal sanction or paid back £30M she initially said wasn't resting in her offshore bank account.

That whole Infosys thing stinks. I'm sure that's why they made the changes to IR35 ultimately killing a lot of Infosys's competition.

I contend that Sunak is incompetent in his duty to the country. He is not fit for leadership.

You support that point. His interests don’t serve the country, they serve his interests. By definition that makes him a corrupt or otherwise incompetent leader of the UK.

Murdoch is still alive?

His network of cronies very much is, from Rebekah Brooks to Piers Morgan. They still pull in the same direction.

He is busy at this time of year.

The good die young (see also: Henry Kissinger).

Starmer's strategy is to just be plain boring. The Tories have made such a mess all he needs to do is not bring any attention on himself or the party and they pretty much win by default. He knows full well that the media in this country will use anything they possibly can to nail him and the Labour party in general, so he's being as boring as he possibly can. Once Labour are in power you'll see some actual policies that the right wing media will attack relentlessly but at that point he's got at least five years, with likely a sizeable majority, to do whatever he wants. And so long as the country feels better in six years time than it does now he's probably got a very good chance of winning the following election as well. The Tories have really fucked up bad this cycle, I reckon it'll be at minimum two election cycles until they're even considered again. With the current poll numbers they may even be relegated into being the third party. There is one major wildcard in the room though which is the potential for a Nato country to get dragged into war (e.g WW3 breaks out) in which case who fucking knows what will happen.

> they may even be relegated into being the third party

This would be hilarious, especially given that second place almost certainly won't be the LibDems given how many people still hate them.

The idea of the SNP being His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition tickles my fancy almost as much as the fact that religions of the leaders of the SNP and the Conservative Party meant that we've now had a Hindu and a Muslim seriously discussing the possibility of a partition of the United Kingdom.

The media Tory relationship is very understated.

The media is very much the reason most of the British electorate will still vote Conservatives, even after years of scandals.

"Everyone who doesn't vote like me has been taken in by the media. Only people who agree with me are smart enough to see through it."

Come on. Even the BBC, which the Tories always say is against them, openly called Jeremy Corbyn "unelectable", right after he won the vote for party leadership. And those statements went unchallenged, while much smaller statements against Theresa May or Boris Johnson were vehemently debated and shouted down.

Where do you think the BBC stands on Brexit, Immigration, Israel etc? Their view doesn't align with that of the Tories, that's for sure.

>>which has an overwhelmingly right wing/neoliberal bias

Apart from small pieces of media like the Guardian and the BBC which you have forgotten about.

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