For Labour to Win it Must Overcome a Massive Government PSYOP

Craig Murray's post this morning ("The Invisible Tories") addresses the issue of the Tories expansive lead in the polls (14 points in the latest) while the direct evidence of the senses is to the contrary:

I live in a marginal constituency, where the excellent Joanna Cherry of the SNP has a lead of just over 1,000 over the Tories. If the most recent opinion polls are correct, the parties’ standings at this moment are similar to the result last time, the momentum is with the Tories and this should be a key Tory target. Yet I have not received one single Tory leaflet (and I live on one of the main residential streets) nor have I seen one single Tory campaigner, including when I have been out delivering leaflets for Joanna Cherry myself. Nor have I seen one single Tory poster in a house.

The explanation closest at hand is that the UK electorate is suffering through a massive PSYOP campaign perpetrated by its own government and corporate media. According to the Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone:

Dozens of misleading hit pieces are circulating in the press that treat PSYOP specialists and regime-change lobby groups funded to the hilt by Washington, NATO, and the weapons industry as trustworthy and impartial.

British journalist Matt Kennard has documented at least 34 major media stories that rely on officials from the UK military and intelligence agencies in order to depict Corbyn as a threat to national security.

Conservative Party prime minister Boris Johnson has run an atrocious campaign. His solution to the problem of what to do about Northern Ireland in the context of Brexit has been revealed to be a lie; his government has been exposed conducting talks with the United States on the privatization of Britain's National Health Service. Then there is the issue of Johnson's cowardly avoidance of an interview with the BBC's Andrew Neil.

In any sane world polls would be registering a double-digit Tory deficit. But instead, no effort is being spared, as was the case with Hillary Clinton in 2016, to gussy up an appallingly bad candidate and trundle his political corpse across the finish line.

A stealth victory for Labour could nonetheless materialize, and it could happen the same way it happened recently in Hong Kong: a massive youth vote turnout.

Ceylan Yeginsu reports in "Young Voters Helped Upend Last U.K. Election. Can It Happen Again?" that

The intergenerational gap in support between the two main parties was so wide in the 2017 election that YouGov declared that age had replaced class as the dividing line in British politics. Over 60 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 backed the Labour Party in 2017, while 69 percent of voters over the age of 70 backed the Conservative Party.

That divide was driven by opposition both to Brexit and to the government’s decade-long austerity policy. One of the big questions in this election is whether young voters, who tend to be underrepresented in opinion polls, could spring a surprise.

More than 1.5 million people under the age of 34 registered to vote between Oct. 22 and Nov. 19, compared with 1.2 million in the same time frame in 2017, government figures show. An additional 452,000 people under the age of 34 applied to vote on the last day of registration on Nov. 26.

Analysts caution that while the numbers hint at the possibility of an explosive turnout, they could be overstating the potential impact. That’s because students are allowed to register twice, in their hometowns and in their university towns, but must choose a single place to vote.

Despite the surge in youth registration, the percentage of registered young voters, at around two-thirds, remains low compared with the older population. Young people also make up a big percentage of nonvoters: Only between 40 and 50 percent of the population between the ages of 18 and their mid-20s voted in the 2015 and 2017 elections, compared with about 80 percent of voters in their 70s.

[snip] 

“Labour is a fantastic party for the youth, but Jeremy Corbyn is a terrible leader and no one can imagine him as prime minister,” she said. “And then we have the Lib Dems who say they will cancel Brexit, but they aren’t going to get a majority, so people are in a pickle and are just choosing to vote tactically instead of idealistically.”

Even though Mr. Corbyn has lost popularity since the last election, following accusations of anti-Semitism and his refusal to take a personal stance on Brexit, youth support for his party appears to be gathering momentum once again.

“The Labour Party policies may appear radical to some,” Dr. Sloam said. “But with the exception of their ambiguous policy on Brexit, they are extremely popular and their campaign seems to be galvanizing young voters.”

This age gap also helps explain why the Tories have such a large lead in the polls. Old people are more likely to answer their phones than young people.

If Corbyn were to win it would be some of the most compelling evidence to date that the clock had run out on neoliberalism; for to win, Corbyn will have to overcome the entire corporate media and government intelligence establishment. It will mean that voters are sophisticated and motivated enough to look past the blanket of propaganda to vote their true interests.

Of course, winning a popular election does not guarantee an effective government. Dirty tricks and legislative snares abound. Nonetheless, there is really no way forward at this point except to scrap the neoliberal Washington Consensus.