Media, political machine take hit from Corbyn
The British Labour leader’s success is a red letter day for democracy, says Greg Barns
THE remarkable performance of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in last Thursday’s UK general election is a powerful statement about the decline of the traditional media and the political class.
Like the man who should have been the Democratic nominee for the US presidency last year, Bernie Sanders, Corbyn has been pilloried by the media and the political establishment.
Fortunately, many voters’ particularly younger voters, were not listening.
Corbyn’s success is truly remarkable given his battles. He was elected leader of the UK Labour Party in 2015 without support from the majority of his parliamentary colleagues. He was leaked against and criticised by those in the party who remain wedded to the opportunism of former PM and war machine zealot, Tony Blair.
The mainstream media rarely gave Corbyn praise. Even the Leftist Guardian opposed him. At the start of this campaign the mainstream media said his party would be wiped out.
It is fair to say no political leader has had to endure such an unfair and palpably hostile media than Corbyn, not only the UK but in this country.
Why do they hate him so? For a start he does not buy the orthodoxy of UK foreign policy. Slavish support for the US and Israel, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and giving succour to an insatiable war machine that has destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and if it were not for Russia would have done so in Syria.
Corbyn also shows compassion to refugees. And he is socially liberal. He refuses to be seduced by obsequiousness to the British monarchy that is de rigeur in British politics.
On economic policy he is an unabashed socialist who proposes heavy regulation and state ownership of transport, power etc. At least, however, he offered a choice on economic management.
Corbyn represents genuineness to voters, particularly younger types who shun political spin and the cynical careerists. He is the real deal. Corbyn believes in his policy platform. He does not wear flash clothes and has no need of the slick and manufactured campaigning consultants who dominant political parties. The more the political machine and its media friends tried to embarrass Corbyn during the election campaign, the more voters perceived this was happening because the establishment hates genuineness and honesty.
In this sense Corbyn is like Sanders. Sanders was an outsider who captivated younger voters but was sabotaged by the corrupt Democratic Party establishment and the mainstream media. The result of that execution was one of the worst candidates in recent US history, Hillary Clinton.
This time the media lost. This is good for democracy. While the media has a role to play in facilitating debate, in recent years in the UK and Australia it has become part of the political game. Media outlets campaign overtly for a party or candidate. Journalists and politicians are too chummy. The fact the ABC has a TV show called Insiders tells you how it is.
But young voters and those turned off by machine politics do not read, listen to or watch mainstream media. They use social media. Corbyn might be savaged and bullied by media and the political class because he did not play the game, but that is what makes him attractive in the world of social media and to younger voters.
That the liaison between the political class and the mainstream media has been defeated by Corbyn is a red letter day for democracy. The British people were given a genuine choice. It was the Conservative Party and more of the same or a very different offering from Corbyn’s Labour. The Conservatives’ campaign was a political machine effort: empty slogans, absurd fear campaigns, and appeals to xenophobia. Younger voters in particular have rejected this toxic mix.
Is it too much to ask that Australian politicians take note and begin to become genuine participants in democracy? To take risks and to appeal to hope and positive vision rather than absurd and dark rhetoric about asylum seekers and terrorists?