The Times newspaper is left wing

[Thatsenoughcoffee]

The Times has been moving to the left for years. They’re trying to compete with The Guardian as much as The Telegraph. They try to reflect the politics of the middle and governing classes which veer left.

It’s a high quality publication, but as a conservative I read it knowing there will be many left-wing writers whose opinions I disagree with. Hugo Rifkind is one example.

The news stories also veer left - for instance the recent attack on the finances of the Royal Family which was carried out in conjunction with Channel 4. There is also a lot of focus on Gaza and not much support for Israel.

My feed on X by contrast is properly right wing. And also low status.

AIBU to think The Times is left wing?

A member of my family writes for the Times and has done since the early 80s. They say the current editor and slants they have been asked to put on their leaders is the most right wing it has been in the last 40 years.

@Thatsenoughcoffee

"William Hague is a massive leftie"

That's ridiculous. He holds centre right views.
OP, I think you are the Overton window in action and have moved a long way across the dial and would probably quite enjoy the new telegraph (which is no longer a paper of record as a result of being pitched so far right in the last decade)

Re: Trump. There are good reasons for right wing Brits to be concerned even they're pro the culture side. One in every £11 of our exports go to the US and he's whacking on trade tariffs. And of course we chose to leave the EU so we've shrunk our market there.

If you think Hague is left wing you are quite extremely on the right.

I wonder whether the OP is slowly realising it is them that has shifted politically - not The Times.

The OP is not posting in good faith.

@cardibach i don't think so at all. Centre right is, say, Rory Stewart.

@Thepeopleversuswork Yes. Similarly I am centre left, socially liberal, fan of mixed economies (private ownership but state ownership where it makes sense) and pro personal responibility. There are many on the left now who see me as a massive Tory 😬

I agree. Do you mean Hague is further right? Or are you referring to a different post?
If Hague, yes, he’s further right than Stewart but still in that One Nation, more centre right tradition. Not left wing. Not extreme right.
Edit - do you mean Rifkind? He’s also centre right. It covers a fair spread of views.

Well said @Catza

I'm glad you contributed

@LostittoBostik it would help if you quoted the posts, or at least the relevant bits, that you are responding to.

Same here. But they are mainly social media keyboard warriors. And men who claim they are feminists while leaving women who want kids and to date 10 years younger and then wonder in public about declining birth rates.

And they don't represent the majority of left wing views.

I think they might be. They just have an incredibly skewed view of what constitutes right and left.

OP thinks anyone other than their very conservative views is left.
It's quite an American view, socialism, supporting anyone else, immigrants etc and you're a lefties/communist.

FWIW, in the recent election I voted SDP. I’d say above all I’m culturally and socially conservative.

I see The Times as centrist, The Telegraph as right and The Guardian as left. I wouldn’t describe TT as remotely left wing per se.

I have no idea where I could encounter someone willing to discuss these issues with me. It's just not likely to happen.

Yes but you were comparing it to the Times!

Yes, the point I made is that The Times tries to compete with an obviously left wing paper (Guardian) as much as it does with an obviously right wing paper (Telegraph).

I’m enjoying this thread because it’s one of the rare time you see a discussion around left/liberal disntinctions. I really think we miss out in the U.K. from not doing much ‘political philosophy’ either in school or in our media discourse so it’s easy to fall into the trap of ‘lefty liberal’ being the same thing, when it’s not.

also op, I really do not think Kamala Harris qualifies as leftist. The democrats are tories to me, I don’t think America has a mainstream left.

Rupert Murdoch is a republican, hence his going after the royal family. But he is not of the left at all (in so far as he has any influence over editorial policy).

I would say that The Times is aimed more at the public/service sector, eg academics, all sorts of medical employees, public sector broadcasting and the arts, etc, while The Telegraph is aimed more at the private/wealth-creating sector, eg business owners, company leaders, investors, etc.

I also think that both aim to be more rigorous and less dramatic than The Guardian, more directly on the left, and The Mail, more directly on the right.

That is not to say that any one of the four publications doesn't often have articles that I would expect to find in a different one, but that's how i find the general tone of each.

Surely the 93 year old Rupert Murdoch has zero involvement in any aspect of The Times now.

Edit: But here’s a NYTimes article that says Murdoch is trying to ensure his media companies including The Times pass on to Lachlan alone, so they stay conservative:

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2024.09.14-213635/www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/business/media/rupert-murdoch-succession-fox.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2024.09.14-213635/www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/business/media/rupert-murdoch-succession-fox.html

Thanks, that’s a good analysis. The people you describe The Times as aiming at would have made up the bulk of Guardian readers 10 or 20 years ago.

The American Democrats couldn't really be described as classically left wing, no.

Murdoch link again:

www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/business/media/rupert-murdoch-succession-fox.html