There’s an election or two coming up and it now seems certain that UK’s voters are going to desert Labour and head for the righter shores of politics. In this largely liberal, tolerant and social welfare minded nation, how did this happen?

Well, the newsprint press haven’t exactly helped; they seem to be intent on acting as enablers for the upcoming Tory government. The newspapers have leapt from one moral panic to another with the sort of puppy-like enthusiasm which would make one smile indulgently if it wasn’t going to lead the country straight into the hands of the Eton-lead, right-allied Tory party (or indeed the more malevolent forces of BNP and UKIP).

Stanley Cohen wrote about folk devils and moral panics in the 1970’s – the press seemed to have viewed this as a handbook in the manipulation of popular culture. The last few years have seen them lurching enthusiastically from folk devils to moral panics in a matter of weeks – knife crime, social workers, bankers, government. And in between times they scream ‘Panic’ over various different end-of-the-world scenarios (which never actually materialise) bird flu, Sars, swine flu.

If I were given to paranoia I would speculate that the largely Tory run press are running a campaign to get their government of choice back in power (they flirted with the Labour party when the Tories were so hapless that they voted for William Hague ....William Hague!), and that the current Telegraph run expenses row was a ploy to take the heat off the finance world (let’s face it, Sir Fred could’ve bankrolled the house of Commons out of his private jet fund). The Telegraph is owned by a pair of slightly odd brothers who live on their own private tax-free Channel island and whose address is given as Monaco – their motivation for releasing details of MP’s expenses (with Labour party first of course) should be viewed with suspicion...

If it’s not about conspiracy, maybe the problem is the near hysterical search for a ‘story’ and the belief that you have to compete with the products of your competitors – the Labour Party are getting the sort of treatment that Majors government enjoyed, not because that group of MP’s were any more shockingly hopeless than previous incumbents, but simply because the press were bored and fancied a change of direction, a different narrative flow as it were. And now poor old Gordon and his pals are on the receiving end of the same.

I don’t believe that all journalists are scum, heaven forbid, but I do wonder at the motivation of a group of people that can happily work for the Sun, the Mail, or dear God, the Express. I mean, don’t they ever wonder whether ceaseless stories about Maddie, Diana and Big Brother interspersed with vilifying immigrants was what their degree in English or journalism is ‘for’. The Guardian is the only paper that I can read these days and even then their blind compulsion to follow the same old tired tracks of their peers (the expenses row, swine flu) when they can ‘do’ proper investigative journalism (off shore banking and tax evasion) is a bit depressing. And don’t even get me started on the fault-blindness that they exhibit with Mr. David Cameron (he mis-used the expenses system too, and you’d think a centre left paper would be hot on his tracks....but no...)

I don’t think that the press are the source of all our problems, but with their ceaseless whining and nay-saying they come pretty close; if they have to chose between good news (the curlew is off the endangered list) or bad news (the cuckoo is on the list) they’ll always lead with the bad. This country had never been safer, cleaner, healthier or more prosperous than in the last few years, but all the press still managed to give the impression that we were afflicted with continual youth crime, ill-health, litter and poverty all the time.

Australians assume that Australia is the best bloody country on the earth – and their enthusiasm is so infectious that hundreds of British folk hike over there every year (to a county that institutionalises racism, pollutes like a bastard and is largely made up of inhospitable desert) – we have a gorgeous country that we largely protect, we agonise over whether windmills are better than wave power and our health and education systems are still the envy of most of the world (including Australians – they invariably have to consider private healthcare/education to compensate for poorly funded public versions, they don’t have maternity leave either). Perhaps, just for one week, we could try talking up the country, loving-it-up, extolling its virtues and downplaying its faults – maybe that would keep BNP et al where they should be, in the rubbish bin of history.