New strategy, chaps. Stop smearing UKIP! Start ignoring them!

I wonder if you’ve noticed how the mainstream media has suddenly gone very quiet indeed on UKIP?

For the last few years, the strategy of the mainstream media towards UKIP has been clear. In the run-up to the European elections last year there was a concerted effort between, on the Right by the Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail and on the Left by the Guardain, BBC and the Independent to run as many smear stories on UKIP as they could dig up. This averaged about two a day on the Guradian and at least one a day in the other papers.

In the Griniad, Times and Independent, these articles were always�followed with 100s of comments of ‘racists, little Englanders…blah blah‘. However, readers of the Telegraph and Daily Mail were generally more than supportive of UKIP and angered by the constant smearing.

Most of the material for these smear stories was supplied by a group working for the Tories who trawled through every blog and tweet and other utterance of anyone remotely connected with UKIP to find ‘evidence’ that could be used to accuse UKIP of racism and fruitcakery. The mainstream media found fertile material amongst several obscure UKIP councillors but never mentioned that almost all of them had served for years as Labour or Tories. When they were Labour or Tories, we never read anything about their sometimes ‘colourful’ views.

This ‘smear, smear, smear’ strategy was presumably orchestrated by David Cameron’s Australian attack-dog election organiser – Lynton Crosby.

Anyway, it didn’t work. The more the mainstream media attacked UKIP, the more people decided to vote for them and UKIP won the elections to the European Parliament. Ooooppppss!

Yet since Christmas, as the 2015 General Election campaign has started in earnest, there has been a complete change of tactics by LibLabCon and their sycophantic supporters in the media. Again this has probably been decided by Lynton Crosby. Now the strategy of the mainstream media is to deliberately under-report UKIP, almost pretending UKIP doesn’t exist. So there have been no more “Farage bit my baby” and “Bloke down the pub said he is going to vote UKIP ate my hamster” stories. The idea now is to suggest that UKIP are a minor party of no importance and that support for UKIP is falling so it’s not worth reporting anything UKIP say or do.

Cameron (Lynton Crosby) is using the same strategy for the pre-election TV debates. He has realised that it was a disaster in 2010 to allow Clegg and the LibDems equal footing with the Tories and Labour and that it would be even worse to allow Farage and UKIP equal status with LibLabCon. So Cameron/Crosby is trying to split the debates into those that will just feature him and Miliband – our potential new leaders – and those that will also include the ‘minor parties’ – UKIP, SNP, Greens, DUP etc. Cameron/Crosby knows that in any debate the Greens and SNP will spout unintelligible rubbish and the Tories will then use this to suggest that UKIP is just as much a ‘mad fringe party’ as the Greens and others.

But UKIP are still there and are gaining support. It’s just that the LibLabCon-supporting mainstream media have deliberately chosen to ignore Farage and UKIP as part of their new strategy to ensure LibLabCon retain their lucrative, self-serving grip on power and privilege.