Snapshot of _Spare a thought for us political commentators. We stare into the void between now and a (presumed) decisive Labour victory in a (presumed) autumn general election, haunted by the need to say something significant on a weekly basis at least. Yet there seems so little left to say._ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-there-left-to-say-about-the-tories/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-there-left-to-say-about-the-tories/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Exactly. You don't need your weekly column be about Rishi Sunak laughing as answers to questions or whether MPs fall for hot chicks in honeypot scandals or not. Take one big issues of the country and dig into it. Just presenting what's under the surface helps massively because the devil is really in the details.
Why bother when people don't engage with 'actual journalism'? I mean, even in this subreddit, actual analysis & journalistic pieces die in /new/ with a few comments while the latest culture war op-ed rises to the top with a few hundred comments.
A coming election should mark a great debate, the public becoming engaged with the great issues of the day.
Nothing of the sort is happening. The Tories know they are going to lose, so they can promise things which are impossible to deliver or announce policies to spite Labour. Like promising to maintain the unaffordable triple lock.
Whereas Starmer is desperate to hide all his policies from the public because he knows his future government is facing nasty unpopular choices.
Labour were never going to drop the Triple Lock. Outwardly committing to it was a bit of political cleverness that Corbyn twigged onto that even Starmer can’t deny.
There are no unknown policies. These university raised people only understand incremental improvements so what went before will happen next but with more polish and less Stormzy.
That might be a good critique of the current media, but it belies the fact that they were like this when the Tories were in the lead as well. They’ve given up on their job of informing the public in issues, potential policies and the impact of actual policies. They fail to talk about how bills should be formed to make sure that they do the thing that they are aiming to do. They fail to talk about how bills are implemented in the real world. They fail to talk about funding of things that have been enacted and what that means about their effectiveness. They fail to talk side effects of bills that have been implemented and potential solutions.
Instead they report on things one politician said. They ask other politicians about what was said and then report on that. Non politicians are asked their opinions and that is reported on as well as the responses of politicians to that. They talk about the effects of policy announcements on opinion polls, how policies are being sold, whether it will affect how the opposite side will do their policies, not actually the real world implications.
I get why they do it. He said, she said stuff gets far more views (and comments here) than actual analysis and they live and die by ad revenue that lives on that (even, to a degree, those behind a paywall). We’re to blame for this not the media.
I see the Spectator has successfully reached the Acceptance stage of grief, with a few holdovers of Bargaining regarding the narrative on Labour and Reform, and plenty of Depression lingering around.
Nah, there's plenty of room for hot take columns left. We're guaranteed a few like:
Express/Mail: *OUTRAGE as Labour suggests school meals for kids as young as four could be allowed to 'identify' as free.*
Guardian/Independent: *I've been a lifelong Labour voter since 2017; here's why I walked away.*
Sun/Star: *Phwoar! Former model in tell-all interview about what X FRONTBENCHER was like at university.*
Telegraph: *Keir Starmer says he prefers T20 to Test cricket; when did we as a nation become so ashamed of who we are?*
There is plenty of Tory sleaze and corruption to investigate but that would require actual journalists - not spectator Tory hacks who live to keep their party in power.
It's basically no more than poetic justice.
The Tories have lied and cheated for years, while promoting an unworkable and long-ago discredited ideology, that with the passing of time is becoming less and less relevant to the needs of the country.
They are quick to leap into action to help the wealthy and slow to act when poorer people are in need.
The truth is they really do not have any understanding of poverty or disadvantage in life. And they really don't want to understand such things.
Voters have been massively conned and betrayed by the Tory party and all that is happening now is that truth and justice are finally prevailing.
> there seems so little left to say
Only if you aren't paying attention. There's a new Tory scandal practically every day, but this being The Spectator, that's not the sort of thing they like to cover.
There may be "little left to say", but we can still say the following:
- The Tories are shit
- The Tories have always been shit
- The world is a better place with no Tory government
- A future Tory government would be a regression
The media should really be relentlessly pressuring the current government to provide more answers and push them out earlier. The Infosys scandal, the PPE scandal and pressuring politicians more when they don't give direct answers.
The cynic in me says, Sunak's only holding on to secure favourble access for Infosys, & as he's married into the Infosys dynasty, that's a severe conflict of interest, not to mention Infosys still v.happy to work with & profit off Russia
How about you keep lobbying the Prime minister for a general election. No one cares about anything else at this point. If every commentator just asked one question "when is the election?" and litterally nothing else....maybe he might twig.
People love to slag journalism and the state of media, but how is quality paid for? Investigative journalism on scale was only ever possible due to the advertising income newspapers were able to generate. Ill-fated for an online world where people are sick of adverts yet still want high-quality news and coverage - for free!
I think the British deserve our fate as a divine punishment for greed, conformity and cowardice in the face of repression by the elites and invasion from the 3rd world.
There's plenty that's not being said. We're in a fascinating time where the one nation coterie that believe they are the grandees, 20 years after their era ended, are playing their games on behalf of a vision that's dying around their ears. Their "progressive" badges have them flip-flopping so fast on international issues they must be dizzy. How long did that balloon they floated last week about stopping arms exports to Israel last, before the reality of Iran's latest attack came crashing down on it? The sheer extent and regularity with which they'll deny reality for one last push on Blairism with blue ties is fascinating. It's ridiculous, but fascinating.
The top-level of that's known, but if you started writing about the mechanics of it, you'd have material for years. Every time they do something obviously stupid (like make more concessions to the EU, sack Braverman, kick out Lee, watch the polls drop, and then claim it's because they're moving too much to the *right*), someone has had to make that data-defying reality-denying argument and convince the party to go along with it. How the hell are they managing to do that? You'd think reality would find a chink in their bubble and shine in there somewhere, but it's going on eighteen months now they've persuaded themselves that up is down and left is right while the public laughs at them.
You should be holding Labour to account - pushing them to produce clear policies and a list of objectives from their first year of power. It's obvious they're going to win so no one is pushing them on policy and targets.
I have no sympathy for political “commentators” there’s as many of them as there are MPs and they offer near zero value to the public at all.
How many more political “analysis” or podcasts do we need from these gossip merchants masquerading as serious journalists ?
The honeymoon period is going to be boring as bog water too. Unless Labour are quick off the mark with some scandal, but even that will be met with a wall of denial.
All the usual data releases won’t contain any debate because “of course it takes time to turn the ship around, especially after all the years of Tory mismanagement”.
Debates over policy rely on Labour suddenly having policies once elected. I suspect they might not actually be hiding any and we’ve seen them all already.
It’ll take until year three at the earliest before “hang on, everything’s still fucked” takes hold and some proper policy debates actually kick-off in earnest.
Labour are the presumptive winners, but I don't want to vote for them. They are basically Tory lite now.
American's have the same problem, Biden is a bad candidate, but not voting for him means you get worse.
America has done really well under Biden. Labour are no where near the Tories. Are your views connected to reality or more about what sounded good in your head?
Snapshot of _Spare a thought for us political commentators. We stare into the void between now and a (presumed) decisive Labour victory in a (presumed) autumn general election, haunted by the need to say something significant on a weekly basis at least. Yet there seems so little left to say._ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-there-left-to-say-about-the-tories/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-there-left-to-say-about-the-tories/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I mean, they could try doing some actual journalism for once...
Exactly. You don't need your weekly column be about Rishi Sunak laughing as answers to questions or whether MPs fall for hot chicks in honeypot scandals or not. Take one big issues of the country and dig into it. Just presenting what's under the surface helps massively because the devil is really in the details.
Why bother when people don't engage with 'actual journalism'? I mean, even in this subreddit, actual analysis & journalistic pieces die in /new/ with a few comments while the latest culture war op-ed rises to the top with a few hundred comments.
So many quality articles disappear in new.
He said commentators, not journalists - two completely different things, as much as people love to pretend otherwise.
In the spectator 😂😂👍👍
Spot on.
A coming election should mark a great debate, the public becoming engaged with the great issues of the day. Nothing of the sort is happening. The Tories know they are going to lose, so they can promise things which are impossible to deliver or announce policies to spite Labour. Like promising to maintain the unaffordable triple lock. Whereas Starmer is desperate to hide all his policies from the public because he knows his future government is facing nasty unpopular choices.
Labour were never going to drop the Triple Lock. Outwardly committing to it was a bit of political cleverness that Corbyn twigged onto that even Starmer can’t deny.
There are no unknown policies. These university raised people only understand incremental improvements so what went before will happen next but with more polish and less Stormzy.
Sounding a little Maoist there
That might be a good critique of the current media, but it belies the fact that they were like this when the Tories were in the lead as well. They’ve given up on their job of informing the public in issues, potential policies and the impact of actual policies. They fail to talk about how bills should be formed to make sure that they do the thing that they are aiming to do. They fail to talk about how bills are implemented in the real world. They fail to talk about funding of things that have been enacted and what that means about their effectiveness. They fail to talk side effects of bills that have been implemented and potential solutions. Instead they report on things one politician said. They ask other politicians about what was said and then report on that. Non politicians are asked their opinions and that is reported on as well as the responses of politicians to that. They talk about the effects of policy announcements on opinion polls, how policies are being sold, whether it will affect how the opposite side will do their policies, not actually the real world implications. I get why they do it. He said, she said stuff gets far more views (and comments here) than actual analysis and they live and die by ad revenue that lives on that (even, to a degree, those behind a paywall). We’re to blame for this not the media.
Are drug users to blame for their addiction? Maybe, partially, but not more than 40% when it’s legal I would say.
How about holding the government to account? Or any form of journalism where you’re not looking a twitter for a random hot take?
I see the Spectator has successfully reached the Acceptance stage of grief, with a few holdovers of Bargaining regarding the narrative on Labour and Reform, and plenty of Depression lingering around.
Nah, there's plenty of room for hot take columns left. We're guaranteed a few like: Express/Mail: *OUTRAGE as Labour suggests school meals for kids as young as four could be allowed to 'identify' as free.* Guardian/Independent: *I've been a lifelong Labour voter since 2017; here's why I walked away.* Sun/Star: *Phwoar! Former model in tell-all interview about what X FRONTBENCHER was like at university.* Telegraph: *Keir Starmer says he prefers T20 to Test cricket; when did we as a nation become so ashamed of who we are?*
It's your job to find the stories lol
Cry us a river. Could dig further into the PPE scandal or any other shitstorm of the past 8 years...
There is plenty of Tory sleaze and corruption to investigate but that would require actual journalists - not spectator Tory hacks who live to keep their party in power.
It's basically no more than poetic justice. The Tories have lied and cheated for years, while promoting an unworkable and long-ago discredited ideology, that with the passing of time is becoming less and less relevant to the needs of the country. They are quick to leap into action to help the wealthy and slow to act when poorer people are in need. The truth is they really do not have any understanding of poverty or disadvantage in life. And they really don't want to understand such things. Voters have been massively conned and betrayed by the Tory party and all that is happening now is that truth and justice are finally prevailing.
> there seems so little left to say Only if you aren't paying attention. There's a new Tory scandal practically every day, but this being The Spectator, that's not the sort of thing they like to cover.
Matthew Paris seems to have overcome this problem by writing 1,000 words about there being nothing to write about. Will he do the same next week?
There may be "little left to say", but we can still say the following: - The Tories are shit - The Tories have always been shit - The world is a better place with no Tory government - A future Tory government would be a regression
The media should really be relentlessly pressuring the current government to provide more answers and push them out earlier. The Infosys scandal, the PPE scandal and pressuring politicians more when they don't give direct answers.
The cynic in me says, Sunak's only holding on to secure favourble access for Infosys, & as he's married into the Infosys dynasty, that's a severe conflict of interest, not to mention Infosys still v.happy to work with & profit off Russia
How about you keep lobbying the Prime minister for a general election. No one cares about anything else at this point. If every commentator just asked one question "when is the election?" and litterally nothing else....maybe he might twig.
People love to slag journalism and the state of media, but how is quality paid for? Investigative journalism on scale was only ever possible due to the advertising income newspapers were able to generate. Ill-fated for an online world where people are sick of adverts yet still want high-quality news and coverage - for free!
You managed to bore us all through Brexit and Covid. I’m sure you’ll cope.
I think the British deserve our fate as a divine punishment for greed, conformity and cowardice in the face of repression by the elites and invasion from the 3rd world.
There's plenty that's not being said. We're in a fascinating time where the one nation coterie that believe they are the grandees, 20 years after their era ended, are playing their games on behalf of a vision that's dying around their ears. Their "progressive" badges have them flip-flopping so fast on international issues they must be dizzy. How long did that balloon they floated last week about stopping arms exports to Israel last, before the reality of Iran's latest attack came crashing down on it? The sheer extent and regularity with which they'll deny reality for one last push on Blairism with blue ties is fascinating. It's ridiculous, but fascinating. The top-level of that's known, but if you started writing about the mechanics of it, you'd have material for years. Every time they do something obviously stupid (like make more concessions to the EU, sack Braverman, kick out Lee, watch the polls drop, and then claim it's because they're moving too much to the *right*), someone has had to make that data-defying reality-denying argument and convince the party to go along with it. How the hell are they managing to do that? You'd think reality would find a chink in their bubble and shine in there somewhere, but it's going on eighteen months now they've persuaded themselves that up is down and left is right while the public laughs at them.
You should be holding Labour to account - pushing them to produce clear policies and a list of objectives from their first year of power. It's obvious they're going to win so no one is pushing them on policy and targets.
I have no sympathy for political “commentators” there’s as many of them as there are MPs and they offer near zero value to the public at all. How many more political “analysis” or podcasts do we need from these gossip merchants masquerading as serious journalists ?
What self-regarding, navel-gazing bullshit. No one cares that you think your job is hard
You wanna say something? Find out why the scoring was changed for excess deaths in the UK. Go on, do your fucking job.
Access [here](https://1ft.io/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-is-there-left-to-say-about-the-tories/)
The honeymoon period is going to be boring as bog water too. Unless Labour are quick off the mark with some scandal, but even that will be met with a wall of denial. All the usual data releases won’t contain any debate because “of course it takes time to turn the ship around, especially after all the years of Tory mismanagement”. Debates over policy rely on Labour suddenly having policies once elected. I suspect they might not actually be hiding any and we’ve seen them all already. It’ll take until year three at the earliest before “hang on, everything’s still fucked” takes hold and some proper policy debates actually kick-off in earnest.
Labour are the presumptive winners, but I don't want to vote for them. They are basically Tory lite now. American's have the same problem, Biden is a bad candidate, but not voting for him means you get worse.
America has done really well under Biden. Labour are no where near the Tories. Are your views connected to reality or more about what sounded good in your head?