Losing the Zeitgeist

There are two stories with regard to Andy Burnham that the right-wing media persist with - it doesn't seem to matter to them that their constant efforts to create these 'issues' are rebuffed or ignored by the public, they just keep on trying to push them.  The first is their obsession with the idea of Burnham calling an early election, despite Burnham having ruled such a move out.  Indeed, why on earth would a prime Minister who has inherited a huge parliamentary majority and still has at least half of this parliament's term to go, want to call an election right now?   There is absolutely no reason to do so.  I know that there is the usual bleating about 'unelected Prime Ministers' and how they need to get their own mandate from the electorate, but this sort of nonsense is only a talking point for the politically ignorant on social media, (as ever, here in the UK we don't elect Prime Ministers - we elect parliaments, it is for parliament to form governments and decide on PMs).  But the media can't forget the fact that they tried to destabilise Gordon Brown by constantly running stories about how he was going to call an early election after he succeeded Blair, citing their phoney 'sources close to government', then, when he didn't, after they had woven a complex fantasy they reported as 'fact', branded him a 'coward' for having 'backed out' of this phantom election.  Unfortunately for them, it seems that Burnham remembers their plays as well as I do and moved very quickly to deny any plans for an early election, taking the wind out of their sails, somewhat.

The second thing they keep trying to make an issue out of are his alleged relationship with the owners of Manchester City, back when he was Mayor of Manchester, attempting to build a story about 'political interference' in City's legal fight with the FA.  This one is based around his remark that he hoped that the verdict going against City wouldn't drive its Middle Eastern owners (who had invested a lot in not just the club, but the city, out of the UK altogether.  Which isn't the same thing at all as saying that City shouldn't be punished by the FA.  Although you wouldn't know that from the reporting,  But again, this story seems to have failed to build up any momentum with the wider public - most see the Manchester City business as being simply a football story without political ramifications.  But again, like that early election story, they keep on trying to make it fly.  The fact they keep persisting with these stories simply underlines the desperation that the right-wing press seem to feeling.  It isn't just that they can't anything, so far, that will really stick against Burnham and his government, it's that they can begin to see that the whole zeitgeist is slipping away from them.   Just look at how increasingly strident and desperate their defences of Brexit are becoming - it is becoming increasingly apparent that, thanks both to demographic changes in the electorate and the manifest economic damage caused to the economy by Brexit. public opinion on the issue has firmly shifted against them and Brexit.  The right-wing press' courting of the far right, particularly Farage and Reform UK is also now backfiring badly, with revelations about their financing and racial attitudes of many of their candidates, sending Reform on a downward spiral in the polls.  They are on the wrong side of history and they know it.  They just don't want to accept it.