While the merits of a so-called Britannia shield to protect Britain from missiles and drones are debatable, the Conservatives’ proposal did achieve one thing last week: the very idea of the shield was used to anoint a political leader. In a significant development, little observed amid the hullaballoo of news events, Kemi Badenoch’s uncosted, pie-in-the-sky plans to build a £10bn anti-missile system were enthusiastically heralded by the rightwing press. It was not just a matter of the plans themselves being lauded, even by outlets that must know them to be ridiculous.
More significant is what it said about the champion chosen by these media organisations in their offensive against the Labour government and Andy Burnham. The Sun splashed a smiling Badenoch across its front page with a banner headline calling her the “Iron Dome Lady”; the Express paraded her in a power suit and a union jack. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, hailed the Tories for seeking to “protect the nation’s skies” and sealed the plans with its “Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless” campaign stamp.
Even wartime leaders could not hope for better, unquestioning coverage from battle-aligned, nation-rallying propaganda sheets. The slavish Badenoch coverage is significant so soon after Burnham’s first conference speech as prime minister. It marks the moment when much of the rightwing press has returned to its traditional Tory-supporting ways after years of flirting with – and outright eulogising – Nigel Farage and his now scandal-hit Reform UK party.
It also suggests a back-to-basics return to the economy as the chief battleground for this fight, and not the madder excesses of the war on woke that has recently consumed them. The praise for Badenoch, who was also recently treated to an all-expenses paid trip to Greece to meet Rupert Murdoch and executives from the Sun and Times-owning News Corp, suggests that she has cemented a position as the rightwing press’s best political hope of beating Burnham. The search for a suitable champion has assumed a growing urgency because the prime minister has so far proved hard to leave a mark on.
The Mail may have dubbed Burnham’s first conference speech “the most Left-wing speech delivered by a modern British prime minister”, but in recent weeks only the Telegraph’s Allister Heath has fired the “Red Andy” missile in a column that called plans for pension reform, a social care system and all talk of a return to the European Union, “mad, nasty and shockingly extreme”. This coverage reminds Alastair Campbell of his early years advising Tony Blair when he was depicted either as a “useless Bambi or Stalin”, he tells me. There are a few factors that are making it difficult for the rightwing press to get the full measure of their enemy – including Burnham’s trajectory from New Labour luvvy to working-class champion, the King of the North.
Labour advisers also cite the fact that Burnham’s inner circle, in contrast to his predecessors, has also been relatively leak- and conflict-free, leaving rightwing combatants with fewer vulnerabilities to exploit. This is the calm before the storm, of course, with Burnham’s opponents gearing up for the budget and the inevitable controversies on 28 October. Burnham has assaulted shibboleths.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
