Thursday 7 May 2015

Election 2015: Tangled up in news

STILL not decided who you are going to vote for when the polls open? Don't bother listening to the national press - which seems altogether pretty confused.

In fairness to the newspapers, this is a General Election in which the result and the aftermath are going to be much more fascinating than a largely uneventful campaign.

There has been no Gillian Duffy moment, no John Prescott punches and certainly no incidents of party leaders falling into the sea.

Green leader Natalie Bennett has had an unfortunate frog in the throat in an "excruciating" interview - while UKIP has had inevitable problems with a candidate or two.

The three main Westminster parties, however, have run sickeningly dull, stage-managed campaigns in which journalists have been restricted in how many questions they could ask - and even in their access.

Of course, there were always going to be the broadcasters' set piece events: first, David Cameron and Ed Miliband were quizzed by Jeremy Paxman before being questioned by the audience on Sky and Channel 4 in the Battle for Number 10.

A couple of weeks later, there was a seven-way leaders' debate on ITV - and then, two weeks after that, an opposition leaders' debate followed on BBC.

Finally, last week, the usual Question Time panel format was replaced by questions from the audience to Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg separately.

Unfortunately, none of it has been particularly enterprising or even stopped me - a self-confessed political geek - from watching football during the Battle for Number 10, going to a football pub quiz during the leaders' debate and a gig during the opposition leaders' debate.

Of course, I did the best I could to catch-up on such events by watching the news headlines and then full re-runs where time allowed.

But at no stage did it feel, at the time, as if I had missed out on anything particularly major - and the complete stalemate in the polls would suggest this to be true.

As such, perhaps it is no surprise to have seen national newspapers over the last few weeks ramp up the rhetoric in an attempt to get something - anything - extraordinary to happen.

Instead, all they seem to have achieved is a bunch of, often contradictory, headlines which make them look rather silly indeed.

For instance, after the seven-way leaders' debate, the headline on the front page of the Guardian was "Labour buoyed as Miliband edges Cameron in snap poll".

By contrast, the Telegraph went with "Miliband flops as outsiders shine" and the Sun produced a dreadful double-entendre next to a photograph of Mr Miliband.

In fact, an average of the four polls held after the debate made it difficult to tell who had 'won' - with Mr Cameron on 22%, Mr Miliband on 21.5%, UKIP leader Nigel Farage on 21% and Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon on 20%.

Ever since, of course, Ms Sturgeon's reputation has grown and she has emerged as one of the principle figures of the campaign - even though she is not standing for Parliament herself.

The Scottish Sun has even backed her party in a complete contradiction to its own national edition which has backed the Conservatives to "stop the SNP from running the country" under a minority Labour administration.

The Daily Mail has also taken to a demonisation of Ms Sturgeon - even referring to her as the "most dangerous woman in Britain". Funnily enough, that again did not quite make it into its Scottish edition.

It also appeared rather confused again yesterday when top half of its front page ranted against a potential Labour government and the bottom half despaired at a basic public service, waiting times for GPs.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph seems to have become obsessed with offering the whole of its front page to letters from business people backing Mr Cameron's government.

Shortly after the Budget, it published a "key" list of supporters - and then, in a separate list, the solicited responses of 5,000 small business owners were plastered across the paper just over a week ago.

Except the impressive number of 5,000 was rather less than that - some of the names were duplicates, others no longer had current business, and at least one signatory even asked to be removed.

Daily Express readers will no doubt be disappointed when it slowly dawns on them that, under the First Past the Post electoral system, UKIP's relative popularity will not translate into dozens of seats.

Meanwhile, the Independent must also be bracing itself for disappointment having stuck by the Lib Dems.

The Guardian, which backed the Lib Dems in 2010, has switched its allegiance to Labour - but it, too, was caught out when it prematurely predicted a surge for Mr Miliband's party on the back of just three half decent polls in a row.

Instead, the polls, averaged week-on-week, have remained obstinately level.

However, this does, of course, leave the election wide open with claims to post-election legitimacy perhaps even extending to the total number of votes overall as much as total number of seats.

It is important then for everyone to use their vote, and for everyone to vote on the strength of their own views - not those of anyone or anything else, least of all the newspapers.

Polling stations are open from 7am-10pm.

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