8 February

To those who have faith in electoral democracy, Keir Starmer’s thumping victory only 2 years ago, after years of totally incompetent Tory rule, should be a wake-up call. Starmer himself may now not survive, because the great populist ‘trending’ machine that decides everything in social media society has an attention span of 10 minutes, and works only with outrage and euphoria. Elections can’t fix the problems that elections cause. No society can run on popularity. But societies of teenagers know no other way, it doesn’t even occur to them how perverse the whole thing is.