The honeymoon for Labour is over, say the massed ranks of the rightwing media. What honeymoon was that? It seems to have been over since 5 July. Despite their own readers voting for that Labour victory in large numbers, the majority of media outlets paused not a moment to reconsider whether their rantings were out of kilter with the country, and their own subscribers.
Polling before the election, Redfield and Wilton found, no surprise, huge Labour leads among Guardian, Observer and Mirror readers, but also large proportions backing Labour among readers of the Daily Express (41% to the Tories’ 27%), the Daily Mail (37% to 24%), the Telegraph (34% to 21%) and the Times (42% to 23%), with the Sun, FT and Economist much the same. Yet their commentators seem quite unabashed. Telegraph columnists have been apocalyptic: “It’s over for Britain, crushed by Labour’s cruel war on the middle classes”.
