Last night I said that it looked like being a mediocre result for David Cameron, well it looks like it was substantially better than that. The Tories have quietly rattled up 875 gains, far more than the 600 or so that they were expected to get. So the Tories must be considered, alongside the SNP, as the big winners. But you wouldn’t know that from listening and watching the Beeb today, who have diverted their eyes from anything as distasteful as a Tory triumph.
This isn’t the first time the BBC has downplayed Tory local election success. They did exactly the same in 2003 when Crispin Blunt resigned straight after the polls had closed. Their coverage then virtually ignored the fact the Tories had actually made 565 gains to concentrate on their pre-cooked narrative that Iain Duncan-Smith would be forced out.
This isn’t the product of conscious bias but the institutional mindset of the BBC.
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