The results of this week’s US election will make sober reading for anyone who dreads the prospect of a Donald Trump second term.
At the time of writing, the Democrats have lost (or are on course to lose) the electoral college, the popular vote, all seven swing states and control of both Houses. All this to a convicted felon who tried to overturn the previous election and was assumed to be so toxic that no one would dream of voting for him.
There are many ways to describe this outcome, but “complete and total catastrophe” will probably do. In fact, the defeat is so comprehensive that it might force the Democrats (once they get over the shock) to ask the kind of difficult questions they have hitherto ignored. Failure can be very clarifying, if the right lessons are learned.
But if that’s true of political parties, it’s true of the media as well.
There was an interesting moment during The Rest is Politics live coverage of the US election. All the panellists, bar historian Dominic Sandbrook, predicted a Kamala Harris victory (in the case of former MP Rory Stewart, by a comfortable margin). This led to much handwringing as the scale of Trump’s victory became apparent.
A polarised, 24/7 media addicted to sensation and desperately chasing clicks is a media ill-served to do its job
Picking over the bones, main host Alastair Campbell reflected on his recent appearance on MSNBC:
“There was no real news being told. It was just endless ventilations of the same opinions about how awful Trump was, about how awful Vance was. And, of course, you go to the other side, you turn on Fox News, and they’re doing the opposite.
“I don’t see how we get to [a] sensible, rational, democratic debate if the media just become extensions of the players that the public are meant to be looking at to make a choice.”
In response, Sandbrook made a telling point:
“I think the one thing that people who are very interested in politics get wrong about politics, more than anything else, is that most ordinary people are not interested in politics. Do not follow it, do not care, do not understand, or do not care to understand…
“As far as I can tell from the exit polls, the single biggest issue for people was the issue that is almost always the single biggest issue in every election, which is the economy. Are you better off? And I think the inflation a couple of years ago clearly really hurt the Democrats, because Harris was tarnished by that. So all the things that we think should have destroyed Trump… a lot of people probably weren’t even aware of those things.”
This view of politics was pithily summarised by the Democrat strategist James Carville back in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It’s something that the financial sector knows only too well, since it can’t afford to get it wrong. So, why does the media need to relearn this lesson every election cycle?
To be fair, journalists are not fortune tellers, any more than pollsters, economists, financial advisers and all the other people trying to understand societal trends. Reading the minds of voters is an inexact science, to put it mildly.
But a polarised, 24/7 media addicted to sensation and desperately chasing clicks from what it perceives as its tribe is a media ill-equipped to do its job: getting at the underlying truth and making the world comprehensible, without fear or favour.
In the absence of solid policy announcements, guesswork ruled the day, much of it ill-informed and damaging
This isn’t just an American problem. While the fixed-term nature of US politics almost guarantees a drawn-out cycle filled with sound and fury, the same is not true (or doesn’t have to be true) of British politics. And yet, similar mistakes are replicated.
To cite a statistic you’ve probably heard hundreds of times, the 117-day gap between the UK election on 4 July and the Labour government’s first Budget on 30 October was the longest in over 50 years.
The delay was mainly due to odd electoral timing (thanks, Mr Sunak), the summer recess and a clear desire by the new government to thoroughly roll the pitch before delivering the tricky news (a £40bn tax hike, in case you missed it).
But whether by accident or design, it led to the most discussed, analysed and often misrepresented Budget in living memory.
Ever since chancellor Rachel Reeves stood up in the Commons and announced the discovery of a £22bn ‘black hole’ in the public finances (to well-rehearsed cries of “Shameful!” by the Labour frontbench), commentators were furiously speculating on the course this government might take.
That’s what commentators do, you might argue. But in the absence of solid policy announcements, guesswork ruled the day. And as Greg Neall pointed out earlier this week, much of it was ill-informed and frankly damaging.
The government plays its own part in this, of course. Indeed, there’s a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that Sir Keir Starmer and co deliberately stoked the negativity so that the actual Budget would look benign in comparison.
Clever politics, if so. But that won’t be any consolation to all those advisers who have spent two months fielding anxious calls from clients (such queries are up by 50% by some calculations). Or to those who might have taken rash decisions based on false evidence.
That’s what a quality media should be interrogating. There’s more ‘content’ out there than ever before, but most of it consists of hastily written opinion pieces that cost a lot less than proper journalism and have about a tenth of the value. Rather than enlighten, they largely exist to confirm our prejudices.
If we fail to understand voter behaviour, we’ll get the politicians we deserve
To return to America for a moment, when Donald Trump first emerged as a political force back in 2016, right-wing commentators started accusing his more forceful critics as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS, as no one calls it).
This, the theory goes, is an irrational inflation of the threat Trump poses, based purely on a snobbish dislike of the guy. This blinds people to the true nature of his appeal.
I’m no Trump supporter, and I regard claims of ‘TDS’ as a dishonest attempt to deflect criticism of Trump’s many appalling traits. If anyone’s deranged, I’d argue, it certainly isn’t me.
However, if there’s any truth to the critique, it’s the way in which it’s led the media to prioritise outrage over a sober analysis of the economic issues that – as Sandbrook so eloquently puts it – drive voter behaviour. And if we fail to understand voter behaviour, we’ll get the politicians we deserve.
As far as the US election is concerned it merely highlights that the Americans are rather deluded if they think they live in a democracy and that they are a nation to be admired. To put a venal spiv into the Whitehouse is unimaginable to many in the free world. But then the alternative was just shoed in and wasn’t elected by her party.
As you say failure can be very clarifying, if the right lessons are learned. Pity the Tories didn’t learn any lessons and chose a rabid right winger as their new leader as they were paranoid thinking about the imagined competition from the new British Fascist party – Reform.
As far as the recent Budget is concerned, it merely showed that Labour has learnt nothing from the Blair years and have shown their traditional colours – class envy. I have yet to read a favourable review. Even the Bank of England, belatedly, have agreed that it is inflationary. (But then what would you expect from Bailey – erudite and prompt action?)