{"id":1022,"date":"2008-06-13T10:30:31","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T09:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2008-06-13T10:32:41","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T09:32:41","slug":"media-deathlock-newspapers-politics-and-david-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/media-deathlock-newspapers-politics-and-david-davis\/","title":{"rendered":"Media deathlock: newspapers, politics and David Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"drop_cap\">D<\/span><strong>avid Davis<\/strong>&#8216; decision to resign as a <strong>Conservative MP<\/strong> to re-contest his seat is one of the more extraordinary political decisions of our time. The fact that a former newspaper editor of the old right (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kelvin_MacKenzie\" target=\"_blank\">Kelvin MacKenzie<\/a>) may be his only competition only adds to the strangeness.<\/p>\n<p>To me, it&#8217;s like watching a mutual embrace become a deathlock. The unrepresentative political media and the representative political system squeeze each other to death as their needs entwine.<!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p>What is missing here? The &#8216;grass roots&#8217; reaction? The response of local people? But are there grass roots? Is there a real political community in the West Hull suburbs and dormer villages of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Haltemprice_and_Howden_(UK_Parliament_constituency)\" target=\"_blank\">Haltemprice and Howden<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Instead our rootless electoral geography awaits a battle that has a frustrated and principled parliamentarian for whom politics is a profession (Davis), pitted against a millionaire motormouth (MacKenzie) for whom it is a leisure pursuit. <\/p>\n<p>This is the confused crisis of representative democracy, where the only enthusiasm for a political contest comes from a politician, and the only opposition has to be injected by a national newspaper, to the likely <em>ennui<\/em> of its own readership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Davis&#8216; decision to resign as a Conservative MP to re-contest his seat is one of the more extraordinary political decisions of our time. The fact that a former newspaper editor of the old right (Kelvin MacKenzie) may be his only competition only adds to the strangeness. To me, it&#8217;s like watching a mutual embrace [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,492],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}