Today a Tory MP publicly accused the boss of a major UK employer of lying. The accusation was made by Bernard Jenkin who responded to the fears of Jaguar Land Rover that a "no deal" Brexit would be catastrophic for their company and their workforce by saying "I think he's making it up".
Now just imagine for a moment that a Labour Party MP had openly accused the boss of a major British employer of lying to the public.
The mainstream media would obviously be absolutely teaming with "Labour are the anti-business party" takes, at least for the rest of the day, and with the incident referenced over and again for months as evidence of Labour's anti-business agenda.
But because the badmouthing of British business is coming from a Tory MP, it's barely elicited a whisper of condemnation from mainstream media hacks, other than a few Tweets from half-decent journalists like Gavin Esler and Norman Smith.
Sustained media partisanship
Alarmingly this isn't the only example of highly partisan editorial decisions to avoid vehement condemnation of the Tories. Last week the majority of Tory MPs joined all the fascist parties in the European Parliament to vote in support of Viktor Orbán's anti-Semetic, judiciary-rigging, free speech-attacking, human rights-trashing regime in Hungary.
Again, just imagine the deafening howls of condemnation had it been Labour MEPs defying the European consensus to vote in favour of the most notorious anti-Semite in Europe, but somehow the Tories get a free pass.
Labour are now the party of business!
If you believed all the mainstream media rhetoric about Labour being rabid extreme-left fanatics under Jeremy Corbyn, the idea that they've taken over as the obvious pro-business party would seem insane, but the reality is very different from what orthodox neoliberals in the mainstream media are trying to make you think.
Admittedly Jeremy Corbyn has said that corporations would have to pay their fair share in tax (especially if they want to bid for government contracts) and that the Corporation Tax rate is going to have to rise so that it's back in line with the G7 average, which wouldn't go down all that well with Britain's most avid tax-dodgers and corporate profiteers.
However, most business leaders should be able to see the sense in many of Corbyn's strategies, and that the economic responsibility of paying their fair share in tax comes with significant payoffs too.
Making sure that major corporations pay their fair share in tax would create a much fairer playing field for hundreds of thousands of small and medium sized businesses that can't afford to pay expensive tax lawyers to hide their profits in tax havens.
Corbyn has clearly listened to British businesses (large and small) and to trade unions and he's made it clear that Labour would seek to retain access to the Customs Union and Single Market, while the Tories keep on threatening the ruination of a "no deal" Brexit and smearing prominent business leaders who express their concerns about this reckless game of ideological brinkmansip as liars!
Labour's policies of investing in Britain's creaking public infrastructure and building hundreds of thousands of affordable homes would clearly create huge opportunities for construction companies, engineering firms, and myriad suppliers.
Labour's "Build it in Britain" industrial policy certainly must make a lot of sense to British-based manufacturers.
And Labour's policy of introducing a National Education Service to provide free education and training to all, would clearly help to ensure that the UK has the kind of flexible and highly-skilled workforce that is needed in order to reverse the Tory productivity crisis and make Britain a high-tech economy fit for the 21st Century.
Whether you support Jeremy Corbyn's investment-based economic strategy or not, you certainly won't be hearing any Labour MPs saying "fuck business" like Boris Johnson, or smearing prominent British business leaders as liars like Bernard Jenkin just did.
You can read more about Labour's industrial strategy here.
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