WHY ARE THE SCREWS BIGGING UP BROWN?

Peter — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:47:53 +0000

News Group, under the harum-scarum management of Rebekah ‘Testarossa’ Brooks is engaged once again in one of its double-bluff ball-tampering scams.
On the one hand, the Sun, (under the startlingly insignificant Dominic Mohan) and through the brokerage of disgraced ex-Screws editor, Andy Coulson, declared itself strongly in the Cameron camp a few months ago, while its raggedy Sunday sister, the Screws, runs a warm profile on beleaguered PM Brown the ‘The Frown’.
          The cuddly, almost flattering piece in the Screws is written by David Wooding, described puzzlingly as their ‘Head of Politics’, although he nearly always writes for the Sun, (while the Screws’ ‘Political Editor’ is Fraser Nelson, hard right editor of the Spectator). The badly edited piece, which appears to underline Mr Brown’s qualities of determination and resolution, could broadly be construed as pro-Brown – certainly not anti-Brown, in the normal raucous, yah-boo style of the Murdoch Red-Tops.
          No great stretch of cynical appraisal might lead the more sophisticated readers (rare among those of the Screws, so that’s OK) to the conclusion that the paper is gently bigging up Mr Brown because they want him to stay, because, as everyone except, apparently, Mr Brown seems to know, Labour’s chances of being re-elected would be several percentage points higher with Dave Milliband in the Captain’s Chair. And News International have an arrangement with the Conservatives to support them – in return for who knows what.
          Besides, George Osborne’s old chum, Andy Coulson, spinner-in-chief at Central Office, is no stranger to spin by double-bluff. Look what he did, as editor of the Screws back in 2005, for Osborne’s own unattractive, squeaky clean image, when he ran a story which showed that the young man with the air of a sinless choirboy was friends with a ‘hooker’ and a ‘drug addict’. [See my blog “Andy & Ozzy"]

Peter Burden » David Wooding

WHY ARE THE SCREWS BIGGING UP BROWN?