It Was The Tweets Wot Won It

An outsider to the British political system would be forgiven for thinking the editors of each of our national newspapers attended different events last night. From The Mail to the Guardian the headlines pronounced different men as having 'won' a debate. A certain Mr. Cameron romped one of these debates according to the Express, but a Mr. Clegg apparently edged above his competitors in whatever debate the Guardian attended. Quite clearly the Independent attended the same debate as the Guardian did, and the Mail and Times decided to pop along to the debate with the Express. God knows what debate The Mirror decided to attend; some bloke called Dave was apparently thrashed into submission by Mr. Brown.

If our outsider decided to pick up the papers and discover that all papers had in fact attended the same debate I'm not sure how he would react. How can one debate have three different winners? Why do the polls quoted in these papers differ so drastically? Surely simple bias isn't enough to dictate who won each debate?

Unfortunately that seems to be the case. There has always been bias in our papers, the Sun is famous for its headlines surrounding the 1992 General Election: "Will the Last Person to Leave The Country Please Turn Out The Lights", they exclaimed as a stark warning of letting Labour's Neil Kinnock win the election. Kinnock did indeed lose only for the Sun to take full credit for John Major's election win "It's the Sun Wot Won It!" The 1992 election campaign was a particularly close one and The Sun is justified in claiming to have won the election for the Tories.

Now we are in 2010, this is Gordon Brown's 1992. An unelected leader, like Major. Unpopular within the Westminster bubble, like Major. Leading the party after a decade of power, like Major. It is also the first election which is genuinely difficult to predict since 1992. The Labour Party really should have won in 1992, they were a popular alternative to an unpopular government, and if it weren't for the petty right-wing press they almost certainly would have won it. Right now the Tories really should be much more popular than they are. A year ago they were streaks ahead in the polls and the forthcoming election seemed like a certain Tory win, but they have faltered, the Labour party are coming into their own and a genuinely close and tight battle is being fought.

Now is the time for the Media. Like 1992 they will come in with their huge biases, creating horror stories about the opposition (Nick Clegg ate my hamster!) and telling the gullible electorate who they should vote for.

But it isn't working.

The old guard of newspaper reporting to tell the electorate who they should vote for has been replaced by a new medium; Social Networking Sites. During the election debates twitter went crazy, and facebook got in on the act as well. Tweets were coming in thick and fast about what people were saying, who everyone thought was coming off stronger and who was faltering. Had there been Prime Ministerial debates in 1992 we would have to wait until the following day to find out who won. In 2010 however we are in control, we decide who was stronger and we decide who will lead our country after May the 6th.