This post is largely written in answer to this very interesting post on NOTBBC.

I totally understand the poster’s frustration and confusion at the disconnect between not just what the polls are telling them but even what the media tell the the polls are saying  and the way the media continue to report as if it is a complete given that David Cameron will be comfortably ensconced in number 10 by the weekend. It just seems weird that the narrative they are running is so counter-intuitive to what seems to be happening.

I think there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, while it may be a comm0n left-wing complaint, it is none-the-less true that the newspapers – who still lead news coverage for the moment – are predominantly right wing in outlook. So even when the right wing press have supported Labour (like the Sun and to a lesser extent the Times past few elections) they extracted a price that many Labour members thought too high. For example, I watched what had been a low and lacklustre party conference catch fire when the Sun came out for the Tories. It didn’t just galvanise people, it felt like a new giddy sense of freedom to be Labour.

So of our leading daily newspapers, most will either be Tory, or follow to a certain extent a right wing agenda, and so want to see the Tories in power, and know they have a certain amount of sway over that happening. The blurring of the lines is bad and getting worse (for example, when the political editor of the Sun believes “It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street,” and the old press, increasingly threatened by new media, are responding to it by doing what they do badly, worse.

But That’s not all there is too it. The more mundane reason, I suspect, that the press are foreseeing a Cameron victory is because that is what they have been preparing for, for a very long time. They will have been courting their Tory contacts, and opening up lines of communication to ensure they get the stories. Every newsroom will have a Tory Government strategy, and they are –  probably without really examining why – reluctant to let all that work go to waste.

So while they have been briefly enjoying the campaign narrative become a lot more interesting than a foregone conclusion, at the end of the day it would be both seriously expensive and worse, seriously embarassing, to have called this wrongly. This would all explain the extremely pliant press Cameron gets. It’s not just a case of Tories wanting Tories – the non-tory press are just as bad – but of business plans and contacts going to waste, and a real unease that those who are meant to be “in the know” are not.

I suspect that any Tory reading this will do so with a certain amount of raised eyebrow irony, and the question “yes but wasn’t it the same for your team in 1997?” playing on their mind. The answers is – to a certain extent, yes. All press should be discerning and questioning of all parties, and Labour got the same kind of easy ride in ‘97 (though to be fair, we didn’t piss a 20 point poll lead up the wall). This was in the end, damaging to our ability to grow and renew as a party, as I think it reinforced the narrative I have written about before.

For me. one of the really interesting things about this election, is that you will be able to say many things about the result, what ever happens. But I cannot envisage a situation in which you could ever,  claim “It was the Sun Wot Won It”.

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