There is no real public enthusiasm for Tory economics. Sure, the heart of a thinktanker dwelling in London’s Tufton Street may flutter a little faster when they hear the words “shrink the state”. But ask the average Brit in Wolverhampton, the Rhondda valley or Dunfermline whether they support reducing the tax bill of the rich, or slashing public services, or flogging off utilities to provide a steady stream of dividends to shareholders, and they’re unlikely to start gleefully punching the air.
Instead, an economic agenda that has produced weak growth and stagnant living standards for a generation, while shovelling apparently endless amounts of wealth into a few bank accounts, has depended on something else: public acquiescence or resignation. “I believe people accept there’s no alternative,” said Margaret Thatcher of her profoundly unpopular economic policies in 1980. If citizens believe that a harmful economic programme is bitter tasting but necessary medicine, they will reluctantly accept it.
As Rishi Sunak prepares for yet another round of ideologically charged spending cuts, he will be counting on public consent to once more be manufactured. And much of Britain’s media stands ready to offer assistance. On the day Sunak became prime minister, a BBC correspondent declared: “The economic backdrop has changed: Mr Sunak is going to have to agree to spending cuts, and to tax rises.” No honest person could possibly conclude this was anything other than a violation of the corporation’s neutrality.
The correspondent was framing austerity measures as the unavoidable consequence of Britain’s economic situation, rather than a political choice. With some encouragement from yours truly, more than 2,000 people complained to Auntie Beeb. The BBC’s astonishing response was instructive: “At no point did our reporters imply what the government should or shouldn’t be doing.” You can judge for yourself.
This is a perennial failing by our media when it comes to framing economic policy. Research by Cardiff University found that during coverage of the 2008 financial crisis, 35% of interviews on the BBC’s flagship Today programme were with voices from the City – more than any other category. During the subsequent bank bailouts, “opinion was almost completely dominated by stockbrokers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and other City voices”, while dissenting voices critiquing the size of the finance sector were very rarely featured.
Rather than being interrogated as instigators of the crisis, financial types were presented as impartial witnesses. The Tories were then able to transform a crisis of market economics into a crisis of public spending, even though George Osborne had backed every penny of Labour’s investment.
Research focusing on BBC News at Ten coverage in 2009 found that it “reproduced a very limited range of opinions on the implications and potential strategies for deficit reduction. The view that Britain was in danger of being abandoned by its international creditors with serious economic consequences was unchallenged and repeatedly endorsed by journalists.”
This framing clearly advanced the partisan interests of the Tories, placing Labour on the defensive back foot on its own record and presenting government cuts as the necessary antidote to a deficit crisis. That the cost of borrowing was low, allowing for extensive public spending, was simply airbrushed out of existence: instead, the supposedly apocalyptic scenario of Britain’s credit rating being slashed was constantly dangled. Yet when that actually happened and didn’t cause any spike in the cost of public borrowing – it continued to fall – the narrative didn’t change.
It seems clear that many of those responsible for setting the tone of the BBC’s coverage are wedded to establishment economics. The former business editor, Kamal Ahmed, was recruited from the Sunday Telegraph, where he denounced the “mostly negative coverage of the business world” and regretted how the crash had left the west besmirching the “hunt for profit”.
That’s not to say all the BBC coverage defers to Tory economic ideology: Newsnight’s Ben Chu did a good explainer showing that the supposed £50bn “fiscal black hole” wasn’t an objective measure, but dependent on the fiscal rules and debt targets that are set. But while we expect the rightwing-dominated newspaper industry to parrot the underlying rationales of Tory government, for the BBC to do so helps to manufacture a consensus.
During the financial crisis, the Tories – as the party that most fetishises market economics – understood they were potentially exposed. Aided and abetted by the media, they ingeniously deflected responsibility on to Labour. This time, their own culpability is even more obvious – in the toxic combination of Brexit and the turmoil unleashed by Liz Truss’s mini-budget – but the Tories will once again present themselves as taking necessary tough decisions, and challenging Labour to do the same. It is not the BBC’s job to aid them in this partisan endeavour. This time, the media must ensure that the Tories’ slash-and-burn cuts are presented as what they are: political choices.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
