If you want to get to grips with the shocking levels of mainstream media bias in the UK just consider the reaction to Prime Minister's Questions on December 5th 2018.
Instead of criticising Theresa May for the absolutely shambolic state of her government, or the cynical and evasive scripted non-answers she responded with, or the usual cacophony of braying, jeering, and howling from the 300-odd millionaire elitists on the Tory benches, or the way she openly and contemptuously laughed in the face of the millions of workers her party has spent the last 8 years impoverishing, the BBC politics team and swathes of the mainstream media tried to create the absurd narrative that Theresa May somehow won the debate because Jeremy Corbyn asked the wrong questions!
The crux of their ridiculous narrative was that Jeremy Corbyn used his six questions to absolutely nail the Tory track record on poverty, collapsing wages, Universal Credit, and their grotesque publicity stunt the previous weekend of taking publicity photos in food banks (as if they're actually proud of their record of massively increasing poverty to the extent that huge numbers of people now rely on charitable food handouts to survive).
According the the bitter mainstream media hacks, Corbyn should have concentrated on Brexit minutae and the historic three defeats in a single day Theresa May's government had just suffered.
The absurdity of this warped anti-Corbyn narrative was beyond obvious.
It was always going to be the case that other MPs from all sides of the house (including Theresa May's own Tory backbenchers) would bring up Brexit, Theresa May's shambolic last-minute fudge of a deal, and the government's parliamentary defeats. Here's the SNP's Ian Blackford doing just that.
"Is it time that the Prime Minister took responsibility for concealing the facts on her Brexit deal from members in this House and the public?"
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) December 5, 2018
The SNP's Ian Blackford accuses Theresa May of "misleading" MPs. She denies this and the Speaker tells him off for using this word. pic.twitter.com/PJOtkbi5KN
Another element of the ridiculousness is that the three parliamentary defeats Theresa May suffered came as a direct consequence of Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party colleagues voting against the government.
Yet another element of the ridiculousness is that there are 5 days of parliamentary debate scheduled on Theresa May's Brexit shambles before the crunch vote on December 11th. PMQs was one of the very few political opportunities to talk about any other issue for the entire week, and the hacks all supposedly wanted Corbyn to waste it away on even more Brexit bickering!
By choosing not to gloat about Monday's parliamentary defeats and focus on poverty and collapsing living standards Corbyn opened a second front of attack, and a really important one too.
If Theresa May's Brexit deal is going to be stopped, triggering either a General Election or another EU referendum, it's now absolutely vital to make the crucial point that stagnant wages, soaring poverty, collapsing public services, crumbing infrastructure have nothing to do with immigration and the EU and everything to do with 8 ruinous years of Tory austerity dogma, wage repression, and under-investment.
If you're one of the millions of UK workers to have suffered a decade long real-terms decline in your wages, here's Theresa May and her millionaire Tory chums openly laughing at your plight!
— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) December 6, 2018
They make us poorer then they actually laugh at what they've done. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/n1M9e4f5J9
Then there's the fact that Corbyn's questions on poverty created an extraordinary clip that was so wildly inappropriate that it should have been widely broadcast and seen/heard by almost everyone. When Corbyn challenged Theresa May on Britain's "lost decade" of wage growth, she openly laughed about the collapsing living standards her party have inflicted.
- As a result of deliberate wage repression policies and ideologically driven cuts to in-work benefits millions of UK workers are far worse off in real terms than they were 10 years ago.
- Tory Universal Credit has created massive spikes in poverty and unfairness everywhere it's been rolled out. And the curse of UC is spreading to places like Liverpool and North Kensington (where Grenfell Tower happened) just before Christmas.
- From 2010 onward Tories imposed the longest real-terms collapse in workers' wages since records began.
- Rates of in-work poverty are absolutely soaring, with 2/3 of children growing up in poverty actually living in working households.
- A damning United Nations report has slammed the Tories for replacing traditional British concern and compassion for vulnerable and suffering people with a "punitive, mean-spirited and callous approach".
- Exploitative and low-paid jobs like Zero Hours Contracts and fake self-employment in the gig economy have spread like wildfire since 2010.
And when Jeremy Corbyn challenged Theresa May on this absolutely outrageous track record, she actually sat there and laughed.
Instead of furiously attacking Jeremy Corbyn for asking vital questions about the poverty that is ruining the lives of millions, maybe mainstream media hacks could just have asked one single question about whether it was appropriate for Theresa May to sit there and laugh at the appalling wave of poverty the Tories have created?
But no. Holding Theresa May to account simply isn't part of their remit.
Even when her government is in chaos and she's openly laughing at the millions of people her party have deliberately impoverished, mainstream media hacks deliberately switch targets and aim their fury at Jeremy Corbyn for clinically highlighting a Tory track record of failure that extends way beyond recklessly gambling away the nation's future to nick a few thousand UKIP votes, then wasting two years cobbling together an absolute shambles of a Brexit plan.
For them it was an unforgivable mistake for Corbyn to have cornered Theresa May on poverty, and to even create the shocking situation where she openly and publicly laughed at the millions of workers her party have impoverished (a clip they would have shared with the nation if they had any intention of actually doing their jobs rather than cobbling together ludicrously tendentious anti-Corbyn outrage pieces).
What they apparently wanted to hear sequence of questions about the convoluted intricacies of Brexit with very limited appeal to people who live outside the Westminster bubble.
Think about it. If you're one of the millions who are struggling to put food on the table or heat your home, and can't even imagine how you're going to give your kids any kind of enjoyable Christmas, the last thing you want to hear is politicians quibbling about backstops, Brexit legal advice, a thing called a "Grieve amendment", etc.
Instead of furiously attacking Jeremy Corbyn for asking vital questions about the poverty that is ruining the lives of millions, maybe mainstream media hacks could just have asked one single question about whether it was appropriate for Theresa May to sit there and laugh at the appalling wave of poverty the Tories have created?
But no. Holding Theresa May to account simply isn't part of their remit.
Even when her government is in chaos and she's openly laughing at the millions of people her party have deliberately impoverished, mainstream media hacks deliberately switch targets and aim their fury at Jeremy Corbyn for clinically highlighting a Tory track record of failure that extends way beyond recklessly gambling away the nation's future to nick a few thousand UKIP votes, then wasting two years cobbling together an absolute shambles of a Brexit plan.
For them it was an unforgivable mistake for Corbyn to have cornered Theresa May on poverty, and to even create the shocking situation where she openly and publicly laughed at the millions of workers her party have impoverished (a clip they would have shared with the nation if they had any intention of actually doing their jobs rather than cobbling together ludicrously tendentious anti-Corbyn outrage pieces).
What they apparently wanted to hear sequence of questions about the convoluted intricacies of Brexit with very limited appeal to people who live outside the Westminster bubble.
Think about it. If you're one of the millions who are struggling to put food on the table or heat your home, and can't even imagine how you're going to give your kids any kind of enjoyable Christmas, the last thing you want to hear is politicians quibbling about backstops, Brexit legal advice, a thing called a "Grieve amendment", etc.
The reason mainstream media hacks are presenting this as a terrible blunder from Corbyn is that he didn't say exactly what they wanted to hear. They're all living the high life on six figure salaries so why on earth would they ever give a shit about the tsunami of poverty and suffering the Tories have unleashed on millions of ordinary people, let alone when their blinkered Brexit obsession is reaching its absolute peak?
In fact they don't give a shit to such an extent that they still remain oblivious to the fact that it was this Tory policy of deliberately inflicting poverty and suffering on millions that generated the wave of public anger that actually lifted the Brexit vote just marginally above the 50% threshold.
This week they don't want to hear anything at all about anything that actually impacts the lives of millions, they want limited-appeal context-free Brexit bickering and nothing else, and they're going to scweam and scweam unless they get what they want.
In fact they don't give a shit to such an extent that they still remain oblivious to the fact that it was this Tory policy of deliberately inflicting poverty and suffering on millions that generated the wave of public anger that actually lifted the Brexit vote just marginally above the 50% threshold.
This week they don't want to hear anything at all about anything that actually impacts the lives of millions, they want limited-appeal context-free Brexit bickering and nothing else, and they're going to scweam and scweam unless they get what they want.
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