Andy Beckett is absolutely right to say how the "media`s impulse to take incoming Tory premiers at their word" is echoed by the "inclination of many voters to trust Tory governments", but this is hardly a surprising phenomenon (Incompetent Tories are kept in power by our deference, 26/12/19). In fact, the public`s "deference" for Tory governments is stimulated by a myopic media which refuses in the main to study the relevant evidence,
May`s first speech as prime minister, for example, was heralded by many in the media as, in Beckett`s words, "a new Conservatism crystallising", but there is nowhere in our history which supports the notion of Tories ever "fighting against the burning injustices", doing anything to prevent white working-class boys being "less likely than anybody else to go to university", or, when it comes to taxation, "prioritising not the wealthy", but ordinary people. Beckett is rare amongst journalists, even those so-called "left of centre" ones, in admitting that there is plenty of "evidence to the contrary". May escaped censure in the media for what were obviously outrageous promises, and amazingly, so does the serial liar now residing on Downing St. His repeated claims to be a "one-nation Conservative" were challenged in the Guardian by Michael Heseltine (Boris Johnson has no right to call himself a one-nation Conservative, 12/09/19), but the fact that Heseltine`s own definition of the concept, "governing for rich and poor, young and old, black and white, north and south, so clearly excludes all Tory administrations, even the one led by the originator of the term in the 1870s, from being worthy of the description, constantly escapes media attention.
Britain might well be "mesmerised" by the Tories, but there is an obvious reason for it!
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