You are right to highlight 1997 and the years leading up to that historic election. There are many echoes in this year's election of the Tory chaos in the 1997 campaign. Major would certainly have done himself a favour by ignoring the media criticism. And Britain would have been a much better condition today if everyone (especially Blair and Brown) had paid less attention to the poisonous views of the Sun, Mail and Telegraph.
I also think that the enduring role of the Telegraph, Mail etc has shifted Conservative Party politics to the right over the long-term, and different Conservative Prime Ministers from Major to Cameron and May have failed to deal with this. Sunak has suffered from it too: Johnson and Truss were obviously in tune- indeed collusion -with the newspapers.
Without question. I'm hoping that their influence on government policy will diminish dramatically after 4 July but that may be a triumph of hope over 40 years' experience!
You are right to highlight 1997 and the years leading up to that historic election. There are many echoes in this year's election of the Tory chaos in the 1997 campaign. Major would certainly have done himself a favour by ignoring the media criticism. And Britain would have been a much better condition today if everyone (especially Blair and Brown) had paid less attention to the poisonous views of the Sun, Mail and Telegraph.
I also think that the enduring role of the Telegraph, Mail etc has shifted Conservative Party politics to the right over the long-term, and different Conservative Prime Ministers from Major to Cameron and May have failed to deal with this. Sunak has suffered from it too: Johnson and Truss were obviously in tune- indeed collusion -with the newspapers.
Without question. I'm hoping that their influence on government policy will diminish dramatically after 4 July but that may be a triumph of hope over 40 years' experience!
Fingers crossed!