Thursday, October 09, 2008

New Statesman Becomes Brown Cheerleader

While Tribune may be in trouble financially, the New Statesman seems to have its issues too, although more on the editorial side. Raging battles have been fought since the departure of their much respected editor John Kampfner over the editorial direction of the magazine. The battle seems now to have been resolved, with the mag taking on a cheerleading role for Gordon Brown.

In the latest issue it has a cover story by new political reporter James MacIntyre on the supposed cracking of David Cameron's facade. The story might as well have been written in the Number 10 Press Office. It tries to suggest that David Cameron is some kind of foaming at the mouth right winger, LOL. Straight out of the failed Brown campaign copy book. It's almost worth a 'fisk' ... but not quite.

And then there is the unbelievably strange leader column. I don't know if the new editor, Jason Cowley, has started his job yet, but I can barely believe this strange editorial was written by him. It reads like a sixth form essay or as if it had been dictated down the phone by someone.

Well, no one can say that the NS is not a Brownite organ any longer. Geoffrey Robinson has finally got his way.

I'm told that the NS is far from a happy ship at the moment. It appears from reading the leader column that a new edict has gone out that all politicians mentioned in the magazine must in future be referred to as Mr, Ms or Mrs (although James Macintyre doesn't seem to have got the memo). But there is one happy consequence of that. No longer will anyone be able to call Lady T, 'Thatcher'.

14 comments:

p smith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
p smith said...

I know this is completely off topic but am I the only person to find Robert Peston (BBC business correspondent) possibly the most irritating man in the world. Not because he is clearly a jerk or because he palpably loves himself but because he cannot speak properly.

What is it with his intonation that requires him to stress random alternate words in every sentence like he is providing the voice over for a film trailer. It is almost impossible to listen to him and in fact if you did make the effort, what he says is usually nothing more than a montage of passe partout cliches.

The guy almost makes me glad to hear Nick Robinson.

Man in a Shed said...

If you think that's weird - the mole thinks Vince Cable might be made Chancellor if things get worse.

I'd like to say its time for random drugs testing over at The First Post, but deep down I have a feeling Brown's desperate enough to do it.

Events dear boy, events said...

Maybe what you say is right but the article has a point and Martin Bright made some good points as well. The dynamics changed this week and Mandelson's return should be a source of great concern to Cameron.

Th last two weeks have thrown the Tory strategy off course and unless they rethink pretty fast Brown will regain the initiative, no matter it was all his fault to start with.

T England. Raised from the dead. said...

David Cameron is some kind of foaming at the mouth right winger

Labour bods say it like its a bad thing!
And that's what's so funny!
If people liked the left & its perthetic ideals so much, dont the left think they'd be a bit more popular?

The left have spent so long telling anyone who will listen that to be right wing is wrong they havn't relised SO MANY people are MORE than happy to see things brought to the right (even the EU is turning right)just to get some sanity back into society & get rid of the political madness that is the left.

Labour & it's lefty ways are so disliked, I even know two old time Labour bods (union members) who said the same as me!
They are voting Tory next time & even thinking of voting BNP if the Tory's dont stick up for the British when they come to power!!

I will NOT let those bleeding heart lefties make me out to be a bad person because I'm not :o)

Alan Douglas said...

Ah, the dear old New Statesman - I'm forever grateful to it, as in the 50s I read it assiduously.

I suddenly stopped when I realised that I disagreed with everything it said or stood for. I'm still very grateful, and I see nothing has changed.

Alan Douglas

tory boys never grow up said...

It would be fairer to say that the New Statesman resumes its role as a Brown Cheerleader.

Iain - why no comment on the Tory run Kent County Council loosing it ratepayers money by lending to a Icelandic bank where the West Ham chairman was on the board - I would have thought that it was right up your street. How many stories are there that combine the economic crisis, the Tories, your home county and West Ham!

I hope the Kent Tory councillor in charge of finance ensured proper due diligence before lending to those Icelandic banks.

Vienna Woods said...

I happen to believe that Dave has reached a tipping point where he is going to be on the back foot from now on, unless he starts to come across as a much stronger person. Getting into bed with Brown regarding the crisis was a bad, bad move as PMQ's clearly demonstrated. Brown can't be trusted and from hereon in he'll use every opportunity to stick the knife in and then accuse the Conservatives of sabotageif they back peddle on any issue. Brown is already associating the Bankers directly with the Conservative party and this sort of thing "sticks" with the voter. We should be doing more to point out that UK Plc is not going to weather this storm better than other countries as he promised so often. We should also be hammering it home that the "Prime Mortgage" problem is only one side of the story and that his total (and continuing) mis-management of the economy is a major cause. Wake up Dave! Your'e on next.

Anonymous said...

I suppose it's too much to expect Iain to refute the claims about the Dispatches documentary, which his post amazingly fails to mention.

Newmania said...

I wrote an email to you a while ago with this information about the pressurre put on Martin Bright by the Brown bully boys via the rag`s owners. Its Bright`s own comments that are most telling

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/09/16/did-gordon-brown-try-to-get-martin-bright-sacked/

"Its an interesting insight to the new atmosphere with Whelan in command and Brown getting really nasty. Its also rather an interesting comment on funding when Robinson is directly controlling the NS output as it would appear, or at least trying to.Bright himself has said no more but his mention of it confirms the Private Eye take I think"

PS This will be my last comment on this blog .Too busy trying to earn a living.

Thanks for all the fun

Malcolm Redfellow said...

Your starter for ten, that Tribune (circulation 5,000?) is in financial trouble prompts the thought: when was it not? Those of us who read it assiduously in the old days did so because of the writers: Bevan and Foot par excellence.

As for the Staggerer, it has adopted strange postures in recent years: profoundly Blairophobe, anti-war (nothing wrong with that in itself), and pretty well anti-anything else. It has often been the Indy painted pastel pink. Perhaps it never fully recovered from acquiring, twenty years back, New Society and its accompanying baggage. Surely its predicament is adequately illustrated by this week's paradox: an article by Pilger, captioned -- wait for it! -- "Days of sunshine and grace".

As for the Martin Bright article, the main political comment which you skated over, what is there to disagree with? Gordon Brown thinks too deeply? He does not rush to action? That the Labour Government has no relationship to socialism and continues to occupy ground well away from the Left? That the recent appointments to Brown's ministerial team are for the better? That Cruddas would be more useful inside the tent? All, to me, blindingly obvious.

Yet you see only a marginal shift of house style. Curious, that.

Johnny Norfolk said...

The whole of the media is becomming left wing. Have they all been trained by the BBC.

Anonymous said...

I think the point is stated quite dramatically in the cover piece, but substantially true. Cameron didn't say anything in his speech that Michael Howard wouldn't have. In fact, since Labour hit difficulties, Cameron seems to have moved back to a comfort zone on the right.

Admittedly, Blair's willingness to cross several fields just to start a fight with his own party grew wearisome, but I can't understand Cameron's thinking in muddying his own persona and potentially giving up the territory he captured in the first couple of years of his leadership.

Anonymous said...

I love the way Iain honestly believes nobody could think Labour were better than the experience-free toady snotfaced public schoolboys who sneer at us from the opposition benches.

Cameron is in thrall to the city and pretending not to be. Osborne is a rabid deregulator who cannot find a thing to say now that his entire world view has been so comprehensively shpt down in flames. Socially they may be to the left of Davis et al, less ludicrously libertarian and less intolerant of minorities, but economically they are as much in the pockets of the rich as any Tories have ever been.

Oh, and Iain - Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher. Titles are pathetic and your desire to call her "Lady T" is the saddest thing I've ever heard.