The Crumbling Blue Wall

The polprof chatter is about how the Tories are facing trouble in their previously safe county seats. Certainly, their annihilation at the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June briefly sharpened focus on difficulties in this direction, but since Boris Johnson's election as Conservative leader his position has been fortified by a more reliable and sturdy blue wall: the ring of protection thrown around him by the Tory press. That is ... until recently. There have been rumblings and complaints, but something has changed. The Owen Paterson case has jolted something, and since then much of the Tory press have ran with corruption stories, the betrayal of the north, and internal divisions. It's a lovely sight to behold.

This doesn't explain why normally reliable allies have turned their barbed words and not inconsiderable influence against the Johnson premiership. Some might say it's because Keir Starmer does not present a fundamental threat to the class relations they defend, which is true enough. But this is not and cannot be the whole story, because the Tory press, like their party, is not a monolith. Divisions in the Tories cohere around capitals and their alliances (under Johnson, an alliance of commercial, finance, and propertied capital have held sway), and debates - albeit sublimated and conducted through abstract concepts and populist phrasing - about how to manage bourgeois class power. This is true of the press too with their mass audiences of retirees, homeowners, and small business people. Some of whom are (or were) drawn from the ranks of the Tory-voting working class, and others from middle class, affluent, and professional backgrounds. The Tory press compete among themselves for this shrinking pool of readers, but as a rule they enjoy congealed and relatively stable readerships from discrete demographics. The Mail and its relatively affluent - and retired - middle class readers, which is also disproportionately female. The Sun and its intersection of retired working class and "muscular" petit bourgeois readers (White Van Dans, barbers, taxi drivers, truckers), and so on.

The Tory press had (and has) disproportionate power, because it can claim, with some legitimacy, to speak for these millions of people. This isn't because of brainwashing or some false class consciousness rubbish, but because they capture something of their life experience. Their propaganda is effective because it sticks to these experiences, rounds out their spontaneous outlooks, and through repetition and reiteration it sediments into more or less petrified ways of framing the world that are incredibly difficult to dissolve. But the press have to cater to this audience by presenting themselves as the defenders of their interests. Typically, the audience are hailed as taxpayers and their paper champions an inchoate desire for value for money - up to and including the perennial demand for tax cuts. But they are also variously interpellated as homeowners, motorists, bill payers, and their paper draws legitimacy as campaigners for the interests derived from these positions. None of which remotely threaten the class relations of British capitalism, because, effectively, the interest the Tory press articulates is a consumer interest that can never transcend its limits.

Boris Johnson and his bullshit is now in tension with the consumer interest. Brexit and Covid are delivering high prices and labour shortages. The social care shambles, despite Tory efforts at making it as regressive as they can get away with, hobbles many pensionable readers' estates. And the threat to the triple lock isn't far off. With these accumulation of contradictions, to keep their audience the press have to articulate the concern and anger of their readers - unless you're the Daily Express, the go-to for the diminishing layer of punch drunk Tory loyalists.

The political economy of the Tory press, under the force of wretched circumstance is compelling them to enter into an oppositional phase. But, again, this is not the whole story. At the level of Tory intellectuals - understood in the Gramscian sense as organisers of their class - there are big worries about Johnson's capabilities and where his government is going. And where are these intellectuals peddle their wares? In the Tory press as journos, commentators, "experts", etc. Seeing off the existential fright of Jeremy Corbyn by hook and by crook was all very well, but pulling out the stops to help one of his corrupt MPs and gut parliamentary accountability was a hubristic step too far. As is the casual authoritarianism thrown around by some of his subordinates, including the frighteningly limited Nadine Dorries. An unaccountable government doesn't mean that an untrammelled Johnson is going to clamp down on the Tory press's right to criticise their party, but it does suggest an effort at insulating the party from outside pressures. Which could include the clout they have with senior ministers and Number 10 itself. That Johnson was forced into a humiliating climbdown is not enough. The Prime Minister must be prevented from overreaching again, and a (temporary) open season on Tory corruption and incompetence is their collective effort at clipping his wings.

The Tory press can turn on a pin. Thus far, they have been very kind to Keir Starmer when there's been ample opportunities to put the boot in. And they could get the knives out for him and Labour. But why should they? It's the behaviour of Johnson that is posing the ongoing influence of the press over the Tory party some difficulties, and it's the policy menu and haplessness of his government threatening the consumerised interests the press have to articulate to stay relevant. It's a fascinating set of tensions that can only sap the strength of the Tory establishment and one that, if they persist, could present the Tory party a set of painful and insurmountable difficulties. Prime Minister, tear down that wall!

Image Credit