There wasn’t much to laugh about as the dismal recital of constituency results rolled out relentlessly through general election night. Whatever else was happening, it was clear from the word go that Labour was losing and that our hopes of a last-minute revival had proved fanciful.
But I confess that I did manage to raise a harsh cackle when I contemplated the fact that my old newspaper, The Guardian, had backed an even bigger loser – at least in terms of seats won – than I had. After much heaving and straining, including extensive debate among the staff and a dotty “consultation” exercise with its on-line readers, the paper produced its conclusion on the Saturday before polling day. It was a recommendation to vote Liberal Democrat, although qualified by a few Guardian-esque hesitations.
And lo! When the ballot boxes were opened, it became clear that the electorate had not paid a blind bit of notice. Stolidly, they had continued to vote for the two main parties much as they had at previous elections. All that stuff about a fundamental change in the political landscape was so much moonshine.
A few days later, the paper published a breakdown of how its readers had voted. Presumably drawing on opinion poll findings, it showed that 14 per cent had voted Tory, 39 per cent Lib Dem and 45 per cent Labour. Not, I submit, a triumph for the eloquence of the editor and his leader-writers.
All the same, I didn’t get especially steamed up by The Guardian’s decision to back Nick Clegg and company. To those Tribune readers who were furiously angry at what they called their newspaper’s disloyalty, I suggest that they check out The Guardian’s history.
The fact is that it always was an essentially Liberal paper which reluctantly switched its support to Labour only when it became obvious that it had become the real challenger to the Tories.
I kept this history in mind throughout my 30 years on the political staff of The Guardian. My old boss, Francis Boyd, was a Labour voter, but he taught me to treat the Liberals with respect, and to give them a reasonable show in the paper. It had been, he insisted, “their” paper, and it remained the only one they could look to for sympathetic treatment.
Equally, the paper’s attitude to the Labour Party was never solidly loyalist. It was defined for me by my first editor, Alistair Hetherington, when he was hiring me in 1964. “Our approach to the Labour government”, he told me, “will be as a friendly critic – or, if you prefer it, a critical friend”. It suited me fine.
Moreover, if you look back over previous election editorials you will find that almost all of them qualified any recommendation to vote Labour with the suggestion that you might, if so inclined, prefer to vote Liberal or Liberal Democrat. This year’s effort has simply reversed the order: vote Lib Dem mostly, but vote Labour in some seats.
But now we know that the readers weren’t listening anyway. So my problem with The Guardian’s approach to the 2010 election is rather different – and I think more serious.
In my view, its coverage of the campaign was deplorable from a supposedly serious newspaper.
True, the political team performed magnificently. But their work was consistently undermined by ludicrously frivolous drivel all over the same pages, even including a daily piece about what the contestants were wearing.
In one day’s edition I counted no fewer than five sketches of the same event. And this from a paper which already has Simon Hoggart, the best sketch writer in the business. Who needs four others?
However, happily, my old paper never lets me down entirely. Trailing its big blockbuster editorial on page one, it said that it was backing the Lib Dems, but added that if you want to know why, you should turn to the full leader on page 37. But it wasn’t on page 37, it was on page 38. Still the dear old Grauniad.
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The sight of Athens, the historic cradle of democracy, going up in flames is only the latest example in a long and dishonourable history of elected governments being brought to their knees by the free-market ideology of the International Monetary Fund. During its 60-odd years of existence, it has done much the same to governments across the globe, from east Asia to South America.
Argentina is probably the outstanding example, when the government that succeeded the generals’ dictatorship was forced to go to the fund for assistance in 1990. In return for a bailout, the IMF demanded not just savage cuts in spending, with mass job losses as a result, but also a return to the kind of private enterprise system favoured by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
The IMF had performed much the same wrecking job on Jim Callaghan’s government in 1976. The austerity programme it insisted upon – unnecessarily, it later emerged– led ultimately to the winter of discontent and Labour’s defeat by Thatcher in 1979. Perhaps IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn should get the order of Lenin for services to world revolution.
