I was reading how the Daily Mail will soon be Britain’s biggest paper with its fiery compound of middle class aspirations (a thinner body, house prices rising, moving abroad) and anxieties (trying to get a thinner body, house prices falling, foreigners moving here). A jaunty sidebar to the article made plain how we have moved from the unremitting optimism of the thirties (epitomised by the Daily Express), through the unionism and welfare statism of the Mirror of the fifties, through smash and grab years of the Sun, to the bleak apocalypticism of the Mail.
I don’t think it’s adequate to raise an eyebrow and tut that, you know, things these days are pretty comfortable for most people in Britain, so whingeing about house building and transport policy as if the country’s about to collapse is a little self-indulgent. I think the point is that the moaning Mail thrives precisely because its readership is very comfortable indeed, and therefore feels that it’s got a great deal to lose.
The newspaper readership of the fifties was still, to a significant extent, looking forward to indoor toilets. For Mirror readers then, things were visibly getting better, hence the solidarity and positive outlook. Today’s Mail readership, by contrast, sounds bored, soft, uncertain and directionless. If you’re not on the rise, they seem to say, you’re heading for a fall.
Coincidentally, I noticed one of those exclamatory weekly magazines on the newstand. I can’t remember if it was Now!, Heat!, Help! or Cobblers!, but it had the most wonderfully expressive coverlines:
Blind? Who cares?
Breast cancer? Who cares?
and
Games that make kids go psycho
Which last is a promotional offer that surely can’t be beat.
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