The media still fauns over Johnson.

A media that should be applying harsh scrutiny maintains sycophantic propagandising of the achievements of the Johnson government.

What’s the media doing at a critical time, when the government is bungling perhaps the biggest test of British statecraft since WW2, and we’re undergoing wholesale reinvention of our decades long settlement with Europe (not even the biggest story!)? Well, they’re publishing what food Johnson and his team have been eating, showing what Johnson’s child has allegedly drawn, and publishing the Brexit story exactly as Johnson describes it, not as the facts indicate it.

Britain really does have the media of a tinpot dictatorship when it comes to Tory Prime Ministers. If this were a Labour government, you can be sure there would not only be scrutiny, there’d be relentless anti-govt lies and hideous attacks. The media needs to scrutinise everyone; instead they let the right off the hook, and go into rabid dog assault mode if anyone’s left of centre.

I genuinely think it’s entirely likely, if a Corbyn government had been going into this crisis, the media would be calling for a coup, or indeed cooperating with a coup instigated by backbench Labour MPs, the IMF, and the Tory party. The scary thing about that is it isn’t far from what the reality would be.

The British media has shown itself to be, once and for all, unfit for purpose. We always knew this, but even a crisis of such magnitude hasn’t shaken it out of its old ways. The vast majority of mainstream media outlets are client journalists, with a clear agenda, working for the status quo. As Noam Chomsky says; that’s how they were allowed to get to where they are.

We need a revitalised and pluralistic media landscape, we need a full start-over. Until we do, there’s no hope of genuinely radical forces taking hold of state apparatus.