What indeed have we learnt? Well if the truth be known not a great deal – it really is far too early. What we have learnt is that the media haven’t got clue what they are talking about. Over the past two weeks much time has been spent going over the coalition agreement and comparing it to the respective parties manifesto. And you know what there has been a lot of back sliding. Shock horror.
The second thing that the media has found out is that there is a lot of disgruntle MPs. Again shock horror. The greasy pole has two states – going up or off – that is it. If you are not going up then, well as far as a political career is concerned it is curtains. Now there are plenty of MPs of whatever hue are seeing their careers dashed and feel really miffed. However, this is always the case – this especially so amongst ex leaders. We have seen Lib Dem ex leaders, they seem to have more than any other party, bemoaning the coalition in many backhand ways. The truth is that they would have done the same if they had been in Nick Clegg’s position it is just that they weren’t and so now they are bitter.
The final thing we have learnt is that the Labour party are taking their time selecting a new leader. This again is something that the media cannot seem to get their heads around. They seem to want a new leader now – sod the consequences. The Labour party must take their time and not play the media game. Whilst on the subject of the Labour leadership contest it was really great to see the lack of any leadership potential shown by Diane Abbott on the
This Week programme. Put on the spot by Digby Jones she clearly hadn’t got a clue what she was talking about or perhaps more to the point had never ran any government department so could only come up with really poorly formed arguments. Michael Portillo on the other hand batted away the points that Jones made with consummate ease. This is not an argument against Diane Abbott – far from it – but it is important that the Labour Party take their time to listen to all the views before coming to a conclusion as to who the leader should be – this includes the no hoppers like Abbott.
And finally – the financial crises. We are on the brink so we are told by the media. Any second now we will fall over the edge and the country will go to hell in a hand cart. Yet each auction of the government bonds are over subscribed. In short if we are such a basket case why is it that the government bonds are so easy to sell? This is not saying we haven’t got a problem, we have, it is just that we seem to being feed synthetic hysteria all the time by the main press as opposed to detailed analysis. Are it was ever thus.
Simon Marchini LRPS
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