Also from this morning's The Andrew Marr Show:
Fraser Nelson: The big question of this election is 'what decides who you vote for?'. It's not really economic factors any more. Class was supposed to be not an issue in the last election but it's come back in this election and it's reversed. So Tony Parsons in The Sun on Sunday is saying that the paradox here, the new working class hero is an Old Etonian with. Etonian with a Brasenose first, and...
Andrew Marr: It is slightly strange.
Fraser Nelson: Well, it depends. I mean, if you take the view that working-class voters will only vote for people who look and sound like them, who've got the same backgrounds, it is strange. But this is the whole point of the Tory campaign. It's not that. People don't look with reverse bigotry at Boris thinking he's a snob, he's a toff, they think 'do I like what he's saying? and does 'he agree with me on certain values?'.
Andrew Marr: He has a certain warmth and charisma. If you look at Twitter, everyone says, 'oh, he's a liar, he's awful', and all the rest of it. A lot of abuse of him on Twitter. Out there in the country there are clearly lots of people who look at him as a character and a personality and actually like what they see.
Fraser Nelson: That's right. One of the many lessons of this campaign is not to confuse your Twitter feed with your country.
I enjoyed the way Fraser exposed the thinking behind Andrew's "It is slightly strange" comment there.
Yes, the claims that Labour were outright winners of the Twitter battle merely means that they were able to amplify the sound level within the echo chamber - outside it counted for not much at all.
ReplyDeleteThe majority don’t use twitter so it is an irrelevance for most people. Like you say Arthur, it’s an echo chamber. People follow and read like minded feeds and threads, so just like Marr they remain in a socialist bubble.
DeleteIronic, as one of the BBC's articles of faith is that it is "right wingers" who inhabit echo chambers. In my experience non-Leftists are only too happy to argue the case with Leftists but Leftists can no longer debate: they can only accuse, abuse and refuse to lose.
DeleteIt's easy to prove Boris has lied. What is not easy to prove is that he has lied any more than any other prominent politician. But that is what the BBC via its Reality Check, private twitter feeds, presenter comments, framing of narratives and aggressive interviewing tried to do EVERY DAY of the election campaign. Marr's grudging admission that Boris is charismatic doesn't make up for that sustained anti-Boris campaigning, which in fact goes all the way back to the Referendum.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as the Referendum came round and Boris made his fateful choice, the BBC were out to get him. He was no longer the figure of fun, the bufoonish toff, he was now a mendacious liar...he had to be, to explain the Referendum result.
Meanwhile, Ken Clarke (who the BBC used to pursue with equal vigour as the cruel Tory Chancellor who had subsequently done his best to get the whole world hooked on tobacco) became cuddly Ken, packaged as an avuncular figure for the masses.
The BBC's motives and excuses are as obvious as those of a child caught with chocolate all round their mouth, denying they had been at the Quality Street.