I don’t bother with social media any more, unlike during the previous UK election in 2017. Prospective electoral candidates should avoid it too, since writing rubbish on Facebook is bound to catch up with you. But there was something awfully familiar about this graphic from the Tory Party’s twitter feed, as seen on the Guardian‘s live blog yesterday:

It reminded me of something the New Zealand National Party came up with in the 2005 general election, when they tried to get redneck votes by playing the ‘race card’, as we call it:

By way of explanation, that is Helen Clark of Labour on the left; and Don Brash of National on the right, Brash being the former governor of the central bank who got back into politics to complete the so-called Neoliberal revolution. It is a brutally effective sign, once you know that ‘iwi’ refers to the Maori word for tribe, and the referent is to the legal conflict at the time over the ownership of the foreshore. What might have been a technical legal argument became a major faultline in New Zealand politics ; Brash did not win the 2005 election, but he got very close, paving the way for another finance man, John Key, to win in 2008, and to remain in power until the Panama Papers were released.

Anyway, back to the British election, it might have been slightly more effective if Corbyn was on the left, but it still puts the dichotomy at its most stark. And, of course, it is abhorrent that the latest terrorist attack in London has been politicised by the Tories. For all the talk about Jeremy Corbyn being anti-Semitic, and associating with Palestinian groups and other terrorists, this had just been words before the UK citizens died in London.

Now we also see the blatant bias, and partisanship of the UK media, including the BBC. Not only is Corbyn portrayed as ‘soft’ on terrorism, but the trope of his links with muslim terrorists is back in play. To give an example that the BBC’s international viewers would have seen, take the BBC World News programme Newsday, which screens at around midday in New Zealand. Yesterday the London presenter was Kasia Madeira, and she had on a guest from the Sunday Times, Katherine Forster,to discuss how the terrorist attack had become political. Apparently this was because Corbyn had put the blame on austerity, and specifically on the cuts to spending on the Parole Board and related services. With facilitation from Madeira, Forster then went on to state that Corbyn was known to ‘side’ with terrorist organisations such as Hamas in the occupied part of Palestine, and of course the I.R.A.

Now ‘sided’ sounds a relatively innocuous word. But it is much stronger than ‘sympathiser’ for example, or supporter, and much closer to being a ‘collaborator’. So there we are, back to the Tories’ favourite trope, identifying Corbyn and Labour as the enemy within, not just soft on terrorism. Of course, Kasia Madeira never challenged the use of the term ‘sided’, or the claim that Corbyn abets terrorists. This was either because the BBC does not do that to guests chosen from the Tory press, or she is as right wing as Ms Forster.

But, unlike the Tory press, the BBC is meant to be objective and balanced. Having a smear artist like Forster on proves that the BBC is both biased and partisan, on behalf of the Conservative Party. There is certainly no balance on any of the BBC World News programmes that screen here in the evening, and there is a lot of commentary coming from business guests who are, if not inevitably Tory, then certainly not sympathetic to Labour. In a binary system the side with the most money usually wins, but having media stooges also helps.