It’s become standard practice to dismiss Tony Blair as the obedient poodle of his counterpart across the water.  But while I don’t recall George W. Bush ever so much as whistling without the poodle dutifully rolling over, this view excludes his even greater subservience to perhaps an even more sinister lobby – the right-wing press.

It began with the 1992 general election.  The ruling Conservatives had been severely weakened by the fall of Thatcher, while the Labour Party, under the leadership of Neil Kinnock,  was recovering from the bitter internal conflicts that had characterised the 1980s to become a viable political force.  Then, on the day of the election, the front page headline of the Sun newspaper read “If Neil Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights”.  We can’t be sure whether the Sun actually handed election victory to the Tories.  The paper itself certainly believed so, or so it proclaimed two days later under the headline “It was the Sun wot [sic] won it”.  Perhaps more importantly, the Labour Party believed so too.

When Kinnock subsequently stepped down, his successor John Smith worked hard, among other things, to address the party’s image problem, and his sales drive appears to have worked.  Though the Blairite rewriting of history would have it otherwise, Smith was already on track for electoral victory at the time of his sudden and tragic death in 1994.  However, when choosing his successor, the party was still deeply concerned about its bad press, and chose as its new leader the ambitious Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair, who took them beyond salesmanship and into marketing territory.

In other words, the Labour Party focus moved from selling what they produced to producing what they could sell.  In particular, they used Bill Clinton’s Democrats’ tactic of triangulation – identify the two main points of view, and pick a policy halfway between them.  While hardly a coherent strategy, the zig-zagging headline-grabbing policies of the Blair government earned them the Sun’s endorsement for the next elections in 1997.

This was all hugely damaging to our democracy.  Rather than Parliament, or even the Cabinet, the consensus that informed government decision-making came from the corporate press.  Things were only worsened by the government ”spin” team pumping out press releases 24-7, giving the newsworthy announcements to “friendly” newspapers and the cold shoulder to more critical publications.  When getting stories on the government involves being nice to the government, the scrutiny that a free press is supposed to apply becomes a liability that market forces are quick to eliminate. 

Then let’s spare a thought for the unfortunate Dr. David Kelly.  When he told the BBC that the famous dossier on Iraq’s WMDs had been exaggerated for political purposes, the government went ballistic.  Doubtless within less than 45 minutes of the BBC broadcast to that effect, their counterattack began.  Dr. Kelly - exposed, insulted and humiliated in a series of spiteful press releases and conferences before the nation and its media, whose constant hounding was the offical explanation for his highly suspicious suicide  - was collateral damage; the real victory was the removal of both the journalist behind the story and the BBC’s director general.  And they accuse Hugo Chavez of cracking down on the free press…

That’s what makes Blair’s vitriolic speech agaisnt the “feral beast” of the media yesterday all the more hypocritical, though it did contain some powerful truths.  His assertation that market forces determine newspaper coverage more than any dedication to accuracy or balance, for example, is not only true but highly pertinent – a reason why the phrase “corporate free press” is one of the great oxymorons of capitalist propaganda.  He also, rightly, reiterates the undemocratic implications of sidelining Parliament, though he is characteristically – and outrageously – dismissive of his own role in making it happen.

Blair’s choice of scapegoat is even more self-serving and misleading.  He more makes no mention of Rupert Murdoch’s disgusting Sky-Fox-Sun-Times empire and how it influenced him.  Nor does he lampoon the Telegraph for its uncritical regurgitation of innaccurate “intelligence” in pimping the war against Iraq and now Iran, and the Guardian’s recent assumption of this role (as well as its sycophatic coverage of his departure) doubtless spared it too from being singled out.

No, the one paper he criticised by name was the Independent, for its “unsupportive” coverage of “Middle East” policy (he dare not mention Iraq by name, but then, he doesn’t need to).  Andreas Whittam-Smith, the Independent’s founding editor, inevitably defends his paper with an editorial spelling out the spectacularly obvious: that a free and critical press is necessary to keep governments in line.  More comment pieces started popping up all over the web not long after, as various press pundits (though not, unsurpringly, many bloggers) were moved to defend their reputations or to wring their hands and say yes, sorry Tony, we’ve gone too far.

The ludicrously off-centre debate as to whether the press is too critical of government or not should make obvious what was already increasingly clear: that we have no, or almost no, free and critical press.  Indeed, this debate (started, I reiterate, by none but our Dear Leader himself) is symptomatic of media debate in general.  An illusion of open discussion is maintained by the intensity of the debate, while its narrow scope allows any other position (such as that the invasion of Iraq was neither a good thing nor a “folly” or “mistake” but a monstruous war crime) to be drowned out or dismissed as extreme, outdated, or preposterous.  As such, far from being a challenge, the token dissent from the more “liberal” papers only serves to strengthen the Official Truth.

Of course, while he has made the beast what it is today, Tony Blair did not create it.  For as well as being a newspaper (or, to give it the Blair spin, a “viewspaper”) the Independent, like the big bad Murdoch haterags, is a corporation, and as such, its non-negotiable bottom line is profit.  By UK corporate law, if the Independent is found to have put anything – accurate and balanced representation, say, or critical and consistent analysis, anything - before the gains of its shareholders, then those shareholders can take it to court.

Maximising profits means maximising readership, so as long as some of us demand accurate news and critical views they will have cause to provide it.  However, another thing that should be not surprise anyone picking up a newspaper – tabloid or broadsheet - is that far more revenue comes from advertisers than from readers.  So obeying the law means maximising profits means pandering to advertisers means a largely corporation-friendly view of the news.  Which, with a strongly pro-corporate government, rarely involves rocking the boat.

By pandering to that shameless corporate press, Tony Blair only made it more powerful.  By isolating and excluding the more critical and cautioning elements of that press, he has made it more dangerous.  When he betrays the public to the extent of being an electoral liability (and then some, the despicable lying war-junkie), he has no grounds to whine about the beast ”undermining our confidence” in him.  That confidence is long gone despite, rather than because of, media misrepresentation – and the beast has no choice but to desert him and back its next winner.