Sunday morning reading the newspapers often leaves me feeling like a client for suicide watch, and no time like the present, with recession, even slump threatening, nasty politics. etc. But today, what a pleasant surprise!
First, in Scottish politics, what a difference a day makes: good news for Gordon Brown! A 14 point Labour lead in the first poll held specifically in Glasgow East.
And from the unlikely quarter of the mainly pro-Tory Sunday Telegraph, from Matthew d’Ancona, the first piece of encouragement for Brown from anyone for ages: a victory in Glasgow East could be the ramp for his fight back.
All this sunny stuff leaves the Sunday Times trailing with yesterday’s stale old Labour panic angle.
Do sudden switches of mood like these tell us more about the press than the politicians?
Note that d’Ancona, who carries a torch for Brown although its flame has been flickering lately, sympathises with the Prime Minister’s criticism of the media for the burial of ideas by the 24-hour news cycle, the obsession of the political and media class with personality and personal connection, and the consequent impossibility of explaining, and winning public support for, strategic Government decisions.
Brown’s complaint echoes Tony Blair’s swan song tilt at the “feral” media.
A similar but much broader theme is key to the Independent on Sunday’s piece on the latest massive international report, which concludes we are not making imaginative enough use of new technologies to save the planet.
“This is a unique time in history. Mobile phones, the internet, international trade, language translation and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve [its] prospects. It is increasingly clear that the world has the resources to address our common challenges. Ours is the first generation with the means for many to know the world as a whole, identify global improvement systems, and seek to improve [them].”
So we’re not doomed after all!
I can’t take any more of this positive stuff. I’m off to brunch and back to trivia.
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
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