Short term test of Guardian politics follow the columnists

I have more or less given up on Fleet Street reporting Corbyn with much accuracy. Anyway my idea at the moment is to ignore this for a while.

Today Zoe Williams proposes left unity around a Liberal Democrat candidate in Richmond. Seems to be a continuation of the weekend press. Adam Boulton is standing by for "the rebirth of the remainers". Nick Clegg is on ITV attacking the "Brexit Press".

A couple of things could be expanded.

The Tory chaos surrounding Brexit is the point at which we realise how many fundamental values the left shares – on a spectrum from the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, to the architect of New Labour, Peter Mandelson (on the single market)

Could we have a b it more clarity on John McDonnell and the single market? I think he and Corbyn have a clear view but this is not often reported. Indeed it is sometimes claimed to be vague.

Perhaps the most understandable fear is that any alliance, between any combination of centre-left to green-left parties, spells the end for Labour, whose internal tensions are only ever alleviated when it can promise electoral dominance. It may be comprehensible, but it’s yesterday’s politics, and traps us in this egregious dichotomy where either Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters must take the whole country with them, or he must be obliterated to make way for “sensible” Labour. It’s time to start considering a new reality in which the two wings of Labour, whether as two separate parties or within the same party, draw energy from one another and the vision they share.

This sounds wonderful but I am still finding that Corbyn is not much reported. OK the Guardian may well believe that the Richmond election is best served by quotes from Nick Clegg, Tony Blair, Lord Mandelson etc. However Corbyn gets to ask a few questions once a week and McDonnell provides a lot of economic policy detail. Others may well repeat the same points but there is no reason not to report them. Unless you still have some habits formed during the leadership election or some other wierd

No, stop there. Just till the test of the Richmond election, maybe the Guardian columnists have a point.

But if it totally obscures the official Labour case this may be a bit of a worry.

From the north, the just managing, the left behinds, whatever you want to call them, it may all seem a bit metropolitan.

So the Corbyn ideas about worker rights and extra budget for regions etc may come back later. Maybe even somewhere in the Guardian sometime soon.

Guardian still very confusing

I heard John McDonnell on Today prog and he seemed to be making sense. It was ahead of an announcement I think. So have looked in print Guardian but not found anything.

PMQ reporting was ok, mention for Corbyn. I did tweet support for the Guardian take on this.

But all I can find is John Harris. Very dismissive of Labour, then promo for the Liberals.

Search on Twitter finds this online I cannot see how this shows Labour not interested in access to EU market.  Maybe I missed it in print but similar things keep happening so I now go to Twitter for the news and the Guardian for rather strange opinions based on their own selection of the news such as keeps me guessing.

More reporting please, or maybe invite John McDonnell to fill a long read in his own words?

Corbyn now not much reported

I have not done a thorough study but this is a note a bit longer than a tweet. I will come back to longer posts sometime soon, together with more in the blog about Fleet Street and Europe.

I found out that Corbyn was in Brussels last week from a tweet linked to the Daily Express. I don't think there was anything in the print Guardian. Search through the Guardian found nothing online. Search through Google found this blog post with not much reporting if anything.

The week before he asked some questions of the PM about Europe that were fairly strong I thought. Again not much reporting, detail to follow.

So my guess is that although Corbyn is leader of the opposition the Guardian has not much intention of reporting what he has to say. The weekend before that the Observer editorial demanded he do more on Europe. So you might think they would report what he said and did.

So situation continues as in the referendum period. Corbyn is making a case but is just not reported, especially by the "soft" end of Fleet Street.