You know what’s tough these days? Being a left-wing polemicist, that’s what’s tough these days. You don’t need to take my word for this. Just ask Owen Jones. Here he is, complaining about the “unfree media” that makes it “impossible to have a rational conversation about Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, or just politics full stop.”
Now you may be tempted to say ‘Aw shucks, too bad for the poor booby‘. But this would be a needlessly ungenerous reaction. Because he has a point. True, it’s a point occluded by leftist posturing about the unfree press but, beneath all that guff, there is a point to be made here about the nature of modern political engagement and how that all too easily crowds out common sense. There is, that is to say, a tragedy of the commons at work here. Especially on social media which increasingly (and unfortunately) is the prism through which those of us who toil in these vineyards view the world. It requires a constant struggle to remember that Twitter and Facebook are not the same as the real world.
The same is true of the press which is, in any case, vastly more diverse than Jones allows. Revealingly he makes no mention of the BBC which is, you know, only the most significant and powerful media platform in the country. If he were writing from Scotland, I doubt Jones would have made that mistake.
Because if they get nothing else right, the wilder fringes of the Scottish Nationalist movement at least understand that the BBC is more important than small-circulation newspapers.
But because Jones is sympathetic to Corbyn he thinks it unfortunate, even deplorable, that there seem to be so few Corbynites in the mainstream media. (If this is the case it is, at least in part, because Corbyn has been hiring them to work for him.) How is it possible for ‘mainstream’ views to be so unrepresented in the mainstream press?
“For most Corbynistas” Jones writes, “there is an understandable frustration that their views are treated with contempt by the media: that they have almost no representation.” Hence their unhinged reaction to even mild criticism of their hero. That in turn allows their enemies – of whom they have no shortage – to portray the Corbyn’s furry furies as demented sociopaths. This is, as Jones says, an ungenerous extrapolation from a relatively small – if vocal – minority.
It’s also exactly the same phenomenon we have witnessed (or endured) in Scotland in recent times. The Cybernats are both unrepresentative of most SNP supporters or Yes voters while also being very much more common than sensible members of the SNP would care to admit. And yet they tarnish the entire movement. Oddly, calling your opponents Nazi collaborators tends to have an effect.
But this was always their complaint too: we don’t have a press of our own so you cannot be surprised when people become upset and even, ye gods, modestly intemperate. “Such is the unrelenting nature of the media attack, any balanced discussion of the Corbyn leadership risks getting shut down,” Jones writes, adding“That the media can be so dominated by one opinion – and so aggressive about it – is a damning indictment of the so-called “free press”. Here again, Alex Salmond’s running dogs yap their agreement.
Except, of course, a free press owes no-one anything. There is, at present, no newspaper – not even the Daily Express – for people who think Elvis alive or the moon landings faked even though these are opinions more widely-held than you might care to imagine.
Viewed in this fashion, the unfree press is better understood as the unhelpful press. But it is not the press’s fault that vanishingly few of Jeremy Corbyn’s parliamentary colleagues support his leadership. Nor are his past, well-documented, associations a matter of right-wing mythology. On the contrary, he is proud of his connections. Drawing attention to them is hardly irresponsible or gutter journalism any more than it would be if David Cameron had a long history of associating with, say, white supremacists and other unsavoury types throughout his parliamentary career. (Left wing critics of media ownership also tend to gloss over the fact that the paper that arguably hates David Cameron most is the Daily Mail).
Moreover, much of the most powerful criticism of Corbyn has come from the left. My colleague Nick Cohen, for instance, is not many people’s idea of a true-blue Tory.
But it is true, as Jones says, that this causes a small problem for other writers on the left. Do they stay true to themselves and write what they believe to be the truth or do they trim and remember the importance of being a team player? The honourable answer is also the correct one but this too is, human weakness being what it is, harder than you might think. So I have some sympathy for Jones when he writes that left-wing criticism of Corbyn will be used by the right “as evidence that “even the left is losing faith”. […] The isolated sympathetic commentators end up almost duty-bound to keep in line.”
Well, The Spectator is no stranger to this kind of stuff. Barely a week goes by without some leftist remarking that “even The Spectator” thinks whatever the government is up to is a fatheaded or even wicked notion. Then again, it’s a privilege to write for a paper that has no party line.
But these herd and team effects are hardly unique to the Labour left. Again, the Scottish example is instructive. For months last year pro-Yes columnists – and most newspapers had at least one – abandoned any pretence of rigorous analysis to cheer on the greater good. That was, to be sure, their prerogative and there was no shortage of equally one-eyed Unionist pundits. Nevertheless, at some point honesty demands you submit your own side’s arguments to something like the same level of scrutiny you apply to those arguments you find less attractive.
Because otherwise you’re just keeping your place in the line. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far at all.
Which is also why one of the more remarkable facets of post-referendum Scotland has been the manner in which the side that won the referendum has been subjected to a rather more rigorous post-mortem than the side that lost a referendum it thought it was on track to win.
(Spare me this new myth, too, that no-one thought Yes could win. Alex Salmond did and so did those close to him. So, by September last year, did plenty of other people. Anyone who thought Yes would win less than 40 percent of the vote should have their licence revoked.)
Still, even now, the herd mentality means the Yes side has not spent much time reflecting on the weaknesses of its own offering. Instead it has preferred to congratulate itself on coming so close to victory. Gosh, weren’t we magnificent? Then again, that’s a very traditional Scottish response to defeat.
(There have, it is true, been a couple of notable exceptions to this trend. One written by Alex Bell, the other by the rapper Loki. Neither has sparked any notable quantity of nationalist introspection.)
In general, the paradox is that the political argument for independence is perhaps even stronger than it was a year ago but the economic argument, a weakness even in 2014, is incontrovertibly weaker than it was 12 months ago. No-one is much thinking about that right now but at some point some nationalists are going to have devote some thought to these matters.
At some point the Labour party is going to have to come to terms with its own failures too. Choosing Jeremy Corbyn to succeed Ed Miliband was a way of denying those problems, not confronting them. Complaining that he doesn’t receive a sufficiently fair hearing in the press is like Donald Trump whining that too few people recognise the seriousness of his inimitable genius. It kinda misses the point.
Owen Jones, I think, recognises this. “A constructive critique of the Labour leadership is still needed, for its own sake if nothing else” he argues. Unfortunately, “It is, however, an almost impossible task.” But that’s a failure of courage. Every man should aspire to having the courage to betray his party. Especially every opinion journalist. Because how else can you save your party, let alone the truth?
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