The last few days have shown that Labour under Starmer is determined to win on the terms established by an unreformed public opinion. There are to be no half measures. This was always the plan, never mind what was said in the leadership campaign.
The leadership team reckon their only hope is to bow before whatever the opinion and outrage industry says is true, no matter how wildly absurd it is. The alternative, to tell the truth and hope for the best would lead to a resumption of the psyops that did for Corbyn.
It is increasingly clear that our task on the left is to declare itself against the media in its current form, to build communicative resources that can break the sector's hold on key demographics, and to outline a programme of impeccably liberal and democratic reform.
In the process this will allow us to exert meaningful pressure on the Labour Party, to counterbalance the influence of those who have always been happy to operate within the terms of the prevailing common sense, whatever it happens to be.
We have to ask all the left institutions - the trade unions and the cooperative movement in particular, but every collectivity that has some material or communicative power - whether they agree, and if they don't, what they think the left should be doing instead.
If there is a route to a Green New Deal that doesn't involved a life-or-death struggle with the Daily Mail, I would love to hear about it.
