Paper Monitor
11:00 UK time, Wednesday, 18 August 2010
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
What is it about the number 100, wonders Paper Monitor.
Be it expecting birthday greetings from the Queen or adding a name to the honours board at Lords cricket ground, it seems there is some human instinct to get excited about what is - after all - just one more than 99.
Paper Monitor suspects that the extent of the coverage of the coalition government's first 100 days was dictated rather more by the lack of much other news of great substance - it is the silly season, after all - but it made it no less enjoyable.
As ever, no clear message can be gleaned from the spread of newspaper coverage of Cameregg / Cleggeron (delete according to your personal political emphasis).
The Guardian devotes half of its front page to a poll indicating voter approval for the coalition cuts, alongside a commentary from Marina Hyde describing the coalition as a "malfunctioning buddy movie that's losing the script".
It devotes four pages inside to the subject, visiting the party leaders' constituencies, dissecting the anatomy of the coalition and listing 10 lots of 10 things - quotes, setbacks, surprises etc. (That adds up to 100, see?)
Similarly, the Times lists 100 things we may not have known about the first 100 days. The paper restricts itself to two inside pages, as does the Independent which grades the government's "Radical Rating" in key policy areas.
The red tops are a little more predictable in their coverage.
"100 days, 100 cuts," screams the Daily Mirror's front page. Summing up the "ConDem Nation Catastrophe" inside, its poll suggtested voters were in revolt over government policies.
Meanwhile, the Sun has an in which he says the government is "making the weather, rather than responding to it".
It is a very different climate to that faced by Tony Blair after 100 days in office in 1997, when the economic outlook was considerably more sunny.
"Tory deserters breathe sigh of relief," reported the Independent back then, stating that Mondeo Man - remember him - was happy with his choice in the ballot box.
True to form, the Mirror was reporting on "100 days that changed Britain for good", while Jonathan Friedland was telling Guardian readers that the "Blair juggernaut" had knocked friends and foes off balance.
Still, the Mail was not happy, declaring the "100-days War" and reporting Conservative claims that after 17 tax rises and four interest-rate hikes, the average family was £500 a year worse off.
Like David Cameron, the previous Conservative prime minister John Major faced uncertain times when he took charge.
But after his first 100 days, the commentators were struggling to find anything to get their teeth into.
"The worst you can say about him," suggested Michael White in the Guardian, "is that he is decent and a little grey".
Some talked only of the positives.
"Mr Major emerges from his hundred days the best-loved prime minister in living memory, his opinion poll ratings a consistent glow of approval," wrote Peter Jenkins in The Independent.
Meanwhile, Michael Jones, in The Sunday Times, wrote: "The inside story of Major's first 100 days at 10 Downing Street... points to the emergence of a formidable political operator, one, some say, who has the sharpest antennae of any prime minister since Harold Wilson."
On that 100th day, voters in Ribble Valley handed the Conservatives a thumping by-election defeat - turning a majority of nearly 20,000 into a Lib Dem win by 4,601 - in an apparent verdict on the Poll Tax.
If there is a lesson for politicians in all this, Paper Monitor feels it's best they don't spend too long navel-gazing over their first century.
Rather, take the Geoffrey Boycott approach. Stay steady and alert, keep blocking the attacks, don't do anything stupid and the next 100 will look after itself.
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