Sure, Blair got Murdoch onside. He was young and dynamic and bloody popular with a massive majority, and the Tories threw up a succession of dolts as party leaders. Corbyn had every attack dog at his throat in both this and the previous election. In both cases he chose to take the high road. To an extent it worked with May because she was a seriously unattractive and stodgy figure. It looks like his advisers told him to adopt the same ploy this time, but the Tory backroom boys saw that coming, kept their poster boy out of the glare as much as humanly possible and did what Tories always do best: tell the public lies in insultingly simple slogans. It works because the electorate in this country is largely politically illiterate. Remember all those Beeb vox pops, enough to make a grown man weep at times...I agree about missing open goals. Attacks on the Tory record over a decade were couched in general and mild terms, rarely bigging up those irrefutable specific facts and figures about crumbling schools with huge classes and slashed funding, hospital waiting lists going through the roof, bed shortages, patients dying on trolleys, A&E disaster areas, millions more workers suffering the abuses of zero-hours contracts and the gig economy, homelessness burgeoning, benefits claimants suffering destitution because of a severely ballsed-up and inhuman benefits system,, food banks... All the numbers were out there but we didn't hear anywhere enough of them. Then that big mistake on brexit... but isn't hindsight wonderful.