Corbyn victory unmasks Britain's Guardian

Corbyn shows that there should be more to politics than this false choice, which is why hundreds of thousands of leftists flocked back to Labour in the hope of getting him elected. In doing so, they overwhelmed the parliamentary Labour party (PLP), which vigorously opposed him becoming leader.

But where does this leave the Guardian and Observer, both of which have consistently backed "moderate" elements in the PLP? If Corbyn is exposing the PLP as the Red Neoliberal Party, what does that mean for the Guardian, the parliamentary party's house paper?

Corbyn is not just threatening to expose the sham of the PLP as a real alternative to the Conservatives, but the sham of Britain's liberal-left media as a real alternative to the press barons. Which is why the Freedlands and Toynbees -- keepers of the Guardian flame, of its undeserved reputation as the left's moral compass -- demonstrated such instant antipathy to his sudden rise to prominence.

They and the paper followed the rightwing media in keeping the focus resolutely on Corbyn rather than recognizing the obvious truth: this was about much more than one individual. The sudden outpouring of support for Corbyn reflected both an embrace of his authenticity and principles and a much more general anger at the injustices, inequalities and debasement of public life brought about by neoliberalism.

Corbyn captured a mood -- one that demands real, not illusory change. He is riding a wave, and to discredit Corbyn is to discredit that wave.

Character assassination

The Guardian and the Observer, complicit for so long with the Red Neoliberals led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, thought they could kill off Corbyn's campaign by joining in the general media bullying. They thought they could continue to police the boundaries of the political left -- of what counts as credible on the left -- and place Corbyn firmly outside those borders.

But he won even so -- and with an enormous lead over his rivals. In truth, the Guardian's character assassination of Corbyn, rather than discrediting him, served only to discredit the paper with its own readers.

Corbyn's victory represented a huge failure not just for the political class in all its narrow neoliberal variations, but also for the media class in all its narrow neoliberal variations. It was a sign that the Guardian's credibility with its own readers is steadily waning.

The talkback sections in the Guardian show its kneejerk belittling of Corbyn has inserted a dangerous seed of doubt in the minds of a proportion of its formerly loyal readers. Many of those hundreds of thousands of leftists who joined the Labour party either to get Corbyn elected or to demonstrate their support afterwards are Guardian readers or potential readers. And the Guardian and Observer ridiculed them and their choice.

Belatedly the two papers are starting to sense their core readership feels betrayed. Vulliamy's commentary should be seen in that light. It is not a magnanimous gesture by the Observer, or even an indication of its commitment to pluralism. It is one of the early indications of a desperate damage limitation operation.

We are likely to see more such "reappraisals" in the coming weeks, as the liberal-left media tries to salvage its image with its core readers. This may not prove a fatal blow to the Guardian or the Observer but it is a sign of an accelerating trend for the old media generally and the liberal-left media more specifically.

Papers like the Guardian and the Observer no longer understand their readerships, both because they no longer have exclusive control of their readers' perceptions of what is true and because the reality -- not least, polarising inequality and climate degradation -- is becoming ever more difficult to soft-soap.

Media like the Guardian are tied by a commercial and ideological umbilical cord to a neoliberal order a large swath of their readers are growing restless with or feel downright appalled by.

In 2003 the Observer knowingly suppressed the truth about Iraq and WMD to advance the case for an illegal, "preventive" war, one defined in international law as the supreme war crime. At that time -- digitally the equivalent of the Dark Ages compared to now -- the paper just about managed to get away with its complicity in a crime against humanity. The Observer never felt the need to make real amends with Vulliamy or the readers it betrayed.

But in the age of a burgeoning new media, the Observer and Guardian are discovering that the rules are shifting dangerously under their feet. Corbyn is a loud messenger of that change.