The UK is in political turmoil. The Prime Minister is clinging to power by a thread. Her farcical plans to do a deal with the regressive Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) have caused a national outcry. Her hard Brexit strategy, such as it was, is under assault from every side – including by many of her own ministers and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
So right-wing rag The Daily Express has decided it doesn’t want to talk about politics. It wants to talk about the weather:
Daily Express genuinely just going with awkward small talk as its main headline pic.twitter.com/kHlZz5acgS
— Sophie Hall (@SophLouiseHall) June 12, 2017
Piercing journalism
We might not expect piercing journalism from The Express. This is the paper that, before the election, ran a 20-image photo gallery entitled Evolution of Jeremy Corbyn’s beard and claimed that a Corbyn victory would be a threat to love itself. It also confidently predicted that the Conservative manifesto would be the death of the Labour Party:
SUNDAY EXPRESS May's June Revolution #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/FeV3lp79l1
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 6, 2017
Like most of the mainstream media, The Express spent much of the election campaign spreading baseless smears suggesting the Labour leader was “plotting a coalition” with the SNP and Lib Dems. Corbyn had repeatedly ruled out such a coalition, but that didn’t stop the press from regurgitating the Tory attack line, often attributing the smear to anonymous insiders and sources.
DAILY EXPRESS: Corbyn doesn't believe in Britain #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/cL3VENvhwL
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) June 1, 2017
The paper also repeatedly used the IRA smear campaign to try to discredit Corbyn.
And yet, on 13 June, the day on which May is holding talks with a party with well-documented links to terrorism, the paper suddenly wants to talk about the weather.
A kick in the teeth for the corporate media
Labour’s performance in the general election wasn’t just a kick in the teeth for the Tories and their austerity programme. It was a kick in the teeth for Britain’s corporate media, too. A study from Loughborough University shows that, when weighted for circulation, British newspapers gave Corbyn’s Labour overwhelmingly negative press:
Despite their efforts, the corporate media did not get the election result they wanted. Many voters saw through the smears. In fact, some of them spent election day putting right-wing rags in the bin.
A laughing stock
The Express has form when it comes to filling its front page with weather predictions that are somewhat removed from reality. As George Monbiot has pointed out:
Express weather is not like normal weather. It’s not the weather we experience, or at least not yet. Express weather is what you might encounter on Mars or Venus: extreme heat or extreme cold interspersed with wild storms.
But the billionaire-backed rag’s election coverage has been so removed from reality that it has now fully turned the paper into a laughing stock – along with much of the rest of the corporate press. And just like Theresa May, it has nobody but itself to blame for its downfall.
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Featured image via Wikimedia Commons
