Is Jeremy Corbyn too left wing?

Thanks to the debate surrounding Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for the Labour Party leadership, the majority of the UK press — from the left and right of the spectrum — have been trying to convince us over the past weeks that the British people would never elect an unashamedly left wing government. (Just a few editorials from supposed left-leaning outlets.)

So, as an irredeemable socialist at heart, I sought to try to figure out whether there’s any truth in such claims. Have the British public really shifted decisively to the right over the past 40 odd years? And, if it is all a myth, whether another 5 years of media myth-peddling might be enough to sway the electorate against their own better judgement?

Here’s the result, in infographic form…

Okay. Nothing conclusive on whether the general public has shifted to the right, but what we can say with some certainty is that the UK print media has shown consistent support for the Conservatives over the past 70 years, while the general public hasn’t reflected the same bias.

Another interesting phenomenon has been the heavy bias — over 60% support — towards one party (Convervative or ‘New Labour’) at every election since 1979, and how this has mirrored (and likely influenced) a lesser, but pronounced, shift of votes in the same direction.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this same period — 1979 to 2015 — saw an increasing disillusionment with the two main parties, reflected in a consistent increase in vote share for other parties with little media support (particularly the Lib Dems, but also the SNP, Ukip, the Greens, Plaid Cymru etc), and a general decline in voter turnout at elections.

You can check out the data behind the visual here, which builds on earlier research for the Guardian by Katy Stoddard. The visual is shared under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license, so feel free to republish, adapt and share as you like. You can download the png file here, or send me a tweet if you’d like a high resolution PDF.

Anyway, at the risk of editorialising (ie. cue rant), given the clear media bias against left wing politics, perhaps it’s time for the Labour Party “big beasts”, spin doctors and donors who have internalised the “too left wing” myth to move aside and let a real debate happen on political alternatives to neoliberalism and austerity. For now they are feeding internal division and ensuring a 2020 electoral defeat by other means.

Finally, I wanted to share a few of the more interesting — and dispassionate — reads I came across during my research. An interesting article on the continuing influence of stablished media ‘brands’ in the age of declining print circulation, and a couple of reports on concentration of media ownership, and media influence on the electorate in the UK.