The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.
1. Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph
on working class voters
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The Tories' botched game plan in the Labour heartlands could cost Boris Johnson this election
“Soggy One Nation Toryism risks dominating this election because wet Westminster politicians do not understand the working-class. The Tories’ campaign strategy seems to be inspired by the proto-Blairite cartoon character Workington Man. This council-housed Brexiteer who favours security over freedom is the contrived answer to a flawed question. In the real world, 'freedom' is not the natural opposing value to 'security'; this bizarre assumption merely reflects how deeply liberalism permeates the philosophical premises of Western academia. If the question had been: 'do you favour security (staying still) or progress (getting on)', the response would have been different. If No 10 policy wonks threaten to botch this election by distracting the PM with caricatures, it begs the question: who is the real Workington Man to whom Johnson must appeal?”
2. John Rentoul in The Independent
on Labour’s civil war
Tom Watson has done his duty – he has ensured there will be a Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn
“If Labour loses this election, it will be time for Corbyn to go. Without Corbyn himself, the party is bound to move beyond Corbynism. But it will take a long time to rebuild, and Watson may want to hand over to others to do that. If Labour were to win – that is, if the Conservatives lost more than seven seats and Corbyn became prime minister – there wouldn’t be a meaningful role in government for him. He has done his duty in making sure that the post-Corbyn parts of the party have survived the past four years, ready to help take Labour forward to a broad-based politics again.”
3. George Monbiot in The Guardian
on elites
Boarding schools warp our political class – I know because I went to one
“The justification for early boarding is based on a massive but common misconception. Because physical hardship in childhood makes you physically tough, the founders of the system believed that emotional hardship must make you emotionally tough. It does the opposite. It causes psychological damage that only years of love and therapy can later repair. But if there are two things that being sent to boarding school teach you, they are that love cannot be trusted, and that you should never admit to needing help.”
4. Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail
on the power of Auntie
Why I fear the Boris Bashing Corporation may sway the most critical election since the War
“Although I don’t at all discount the influential new role of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the BBC is probably as powerful as ever and, because of the relative decline of newspapers, arguably more so. With extra power goes extra responsibility, and it’s my contention that in recent days our national broadcaster has shown a worrying lack of balance. It has dwelt obsessively on Tory mistakes and cock-ups while tending to ignore serious Labour failings.”
5. David Aaronovitch in The Times
on scams
We can’t resist the lure of getting rich quick
“Since most of us are not, in the normal run of things, outrageous liars we don’t expect others to be either. We fool ourselves that we are good at spotting untruthfulness (in fact, as study after study has proved, we aren’t) and we are easily persuaded to reshape reality to suit our desires. Or ‘dreams’ as we rename them. That’s why it falls to those in authority to whom we give the job of saving us from ourselves.
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