Right and Left should unite against the common media enemy - the Mail and the Express !

There is a piece by Mark Wallace on Conservative Home today which claims that the Telegraph is no longer the "Torygraph". Well up to a point Lord Copper! I agree that The Telegraph is no more a Conservative newspaper than The Guardian is a Labour one. But it is, and  always has been, a Tory Party supporter - especially at Election time. Just as The Guardian supports the soft Left so the Telegraph today supports the soft Right. The Telegraph and The Guardian have moved a little towards the centre in recent times but there is not the slightest doubt as to where they stand on the Left/Right axis.

The opprobrium thrown on The Guardian by Rightists is not matched by similar attacks on the Telegraph by those of us on the Left. We do not have a similar term to the "Guardianista" to refer to Telegraph readers. This is because, The Guardian aside, the "Broadsheets" are ALL right leaning. You can hardly have proprietors of the ilk of Murdoch or the Barclays and not have conservative newspapers. And anyway we have in those two despicable pseudo-newspapers the Mail and the Express targets enough on which legitimately to vent our spleen.

The acid test of a newspaper's worth is whether it is well-written. Take Peter Oborne in the Telegraph. I sometimes agree with him, and sometimes don't. But he writes like a dream and is unmissable. The same for David Aaranovitch in The Times or Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. And The Spectator to which I have subscribed for many years is the same. I would say that the politics of this periodical are 180 degrees opposite to mine most of the time. But I read it for the quality of the writing - and to know my enemy better!

The value of the three main Broadsheets is clear. It comes from the skill, knowledge and experience of those who write in them. I read them all - selectively. And the digital world means that I can have read a favourite writer from each newspaper before I get up in the morning! The enemy of the Left should not be the Telegraph or the Times, and of the Right it should not be The Guardian. That's outmoded and silly. We should unite across the political spectrum to oppose the mindless, prejudiced, and vile detritus that the tabloids serve up every day. The Mail and the Express should be the enemies of us all.