I loved the 1993 DC Comics crossover ‘Death of Superman’ when I was kid. That’s because I was a child and children are stupid. The arc, in which Doomsday – less of a character than an unstoppable plot device – killed the Man of Steel was not a story but a marketing gimmick.
Superman was never going to remain dead for long and his ‘death’ both changed the stakes of superhero storytelling and removed them at the same time. It was spectacle without substance. After a brief period when the skies of Metropolis were filled with various alternative supermen, Superman himself returned with an egregious mullet and all was right with the world again.
A lot of what passes for ‘news’ in the UK is the current affairs equivalent of the ‘Death of Superman’. The ‘death’ was a product of timing rather than an artistic impulse; a plan to link up marriage plot lines in the comics and the TV show Lois & Clark was delayed and the ‘Death of Superman’ run was ginned up as both a replacement and a reset to arrest the title’s dwindling sales. The rash of stories about the chancellor, his wife, her non-dom status, and their loot are a ‘Death of Superman’ moment.
One paragraph in Sky News Deputy Political Editor Sam Coates’ “analysis on Rishi Sunak’s woes” is particularly instructive. He writes:
Friends of Mr Sunak may rail and look for enemies and ask if there is a coordinated campaign against him. The answer may involve less conspiracy, as tough times mean Mr Sunak — who found fame and popularity for his generosity in the pandemic despite his instincts as a fiscal hawk — was always bound to face greater scrutiny.
That matter of fact explanation is more revealing than Coates perhaps intends it to be. When Sunak became Chancellor, parachuted in after Sajid Javid was sacked in February 2020, news outlets rushed out “Who is Rishi Sunak?” pieces. They were needed because the 39-year-old MP, who’d been in parliament for less than five years, was basically an unknown to anyone but the most disturbed of political obsessives. He should have received that “greater scrutiny” then.
Sunak’s wealth, his wife’s wealth, her shareholdings in Infosys, their US green cards, and her non-dom status were all facts when he became Chancellor. They are now stories because it suits the period of spectacle we’ve now entered. Sunak is under scrutiny now because the never-ending Tory civil war requires him for a scapegoat. Following a botched spring statement and on the cusp of what are likely to be bruising local elections, Boris Johnson needs someone else to blame.
There’s a lot to unpack in Coates’ aside that Sunak “found fame and popularity for his generosity during the pandemic”. That “fame and popularity” was, in large part, a product of press and media coverage. The majority of the newspapers lauded Sunak and the BBC mocked him up in a superhero outfit for a video that asked whether his “superpowers [would] be enough to nurse us back to rude health after the crippling blow delivered by the coronavirus?”
Even as he delivers critical stories about Sunak, hacks continue to accept the myth that the chancellor demonstrated “his generosity” during the pandemic. The government’s propaganda about the scale and scope of its measures during the crisis has worked. The bulk of its “generosity” was in wasted billions, much of which was funnelled to friends and donors. Plenty of “the public” got no help whatsoever.
It is blatantly obvious that there is a coordinated campaign against Sunak and while he deserves it, the idea that this is news and not simply spectacle designed to take the heat off Boris Johnson for a while is ludicrous. Sunak’s embarrassing interview with The Sun today is a cack-handed counterattack which will no doubt continue in the Sunday papers.
A source — Rishi Sunak in sunglasses and a fake moustache — quoted in The Times today says:
He thinks it’s a total smear. It feels like there’s a full-time briefing operation against him. This is a hit job, a political hit job. Someone is trying to undermine his credibility.
That “credibility” was always a soft product of smoke and mirrors, media support mixed with the inevitable popularity that comes with being the man fronting the distribution of cash during an emergency. Had Sunak been subjected to scrutiny at the start — when he was hoisted into the role of Chancellor — that “credibility” wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
The pandemic press image of Sunak was a marketing confection, no more real than the Death of Superman.