The national press versus democracy

First of all, I do not like the Conservative MP Michael Gove.  In fact I am not aware that I like any MP of any political party.  Nevertheless he does not deserve some of the abuse being dished out to him at the moment.

As I write, Gove has recently declared an interest in becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party - and of course Prime Minister.  A lot of comment in the national press is using the word betrayal, along with violent metaphors.  Consider this recent quote from a newspaper columnist:

Six years on, I still cannot quite comprehend how Ed Miliband could effectively knife his own older brother to get his hands on the Labour crown.

Some background is required.  In 2010 Ed Miliband became leader of the Labour Party after winning an election in which his older brother David Miliband was another candidate.  I have lost count of the number of times in which newspapers have labelled this as a betrayal or a stab in the back.  It was nothing of the sort.

 

Ed Miliband contested the leadership of the Labour Party as he had every right to do.  His brother contested the same election, as he also had every right to do.  To regard either brother as having betrayed the other strikes me as utterly childish.

Similar childish language is now being used about Michael Gove in respect of the Conservative leadership election, although for some reason it is not being used about all of the leadership hopefuls.

The use of words like narcissism and Machiavellian are also curious.  Any politician who seeks a higher office can perhaps be described as narcissistic, but the selective use of such a word suggests a bias on the part of the comment writer.

The word Machiavellian is problematic.  It refers to a book called The Prince, which was published in 1532.  It had been written some years earlier by the Florentine former civil servant Niccolo Machiavelli, who died in 1527, and it is not clear if he ever intended it for publication.

The Machiavellian prince is not a simple construct, and it is easy to use a word like Machiavellian without thinking too clearly about its actual meaning.

I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that many people who write for the national press have absolute contempt for democracy.  If one candidate for the leadership of a political party is a narcissist and a Machiavellian, then why can these labels not be applied all of the other candidates as well?

My conclusion - and I may be wrong about this - is that many people in the national press consider it their divine right to ordain who shall lead either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party.  While they are entitled to indicate a preference for one contender over another, the use of infantile language serves no useful purpose.

 

I do not support the Conservative Party, but I hope that it will choose its new leader wth regard to the issues at hand, and without regard to childish rants by comment writers who ought to know better.