The great Tony Benn summing up The Guardian:
There is no paper more adept at soothing the liberal conscience: softly outraged, emotionally engaged, but never dangerous.
It mourns austerity but never fights it. It weeps for Gaza but never names the crime. It celebrated Corbyn’s destruction while laundering Starmer’s capitulation. Britain’s most beloved liberal paper doesn’t serve the left—it smothers it. Here’s why radicals must break their dependency on The Guardian once and for all.
Austerity Porn: Sympathy Without Teeth
After 2008, The Guardian seemed indignant about austerity, profiling food banks, shuttered libraries, and a crumbling NHS. But beneath the hand-wringing, it never attacked austerity’s ideological core. Its question was never Why must we slash public services for a crisis caused by the rich? But couldn’t Osborne be gentler about it? As one 2012 editorial put it, cuts were “painful but inevitable.” This isn’t solidarity; it’s sentimental pacification.
Corbyn: Contained, Discredited, Destroyed
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour was the most radical mainstream project Britain had seen in decades. Public ownership, wealth taxes, anti-imperialism, and an actual break from neoliberalism. And yet The Guardian unleashed an unrelenting inquisition. Over 1,000 articles tied Labour to antisemitism, often repeating claims later exposed as exaggerated by the Forde Report. When over 200 Jewish women wrote defending Corbyn and challenging this framing, the paper dismissed their letter as “redundant.” Even after evidence emerged of internal sabotage, party officials undermining efforts to address complaints, the narrative didn’t budge: Corbyn was guilty by definition.
The Humanitarian Bomb: Libya and the Liberal Love of War
2011 was The Guardian at its purest: moral theatre masking imperial violence. An Observer editorial declared NATO’s bombardment of Libya “An Honourable Intervention. A Hopeful Future.” Timothy Garton Ash hymned the virtues of “responsible intervention.” Months later, Libya lay in ruins: warlords, open-air slave markets, and thousands dead. Seumas Milne finally called it “a catastrophic failure”—a whisper after the fact, leaving the initial cheerleading intact in liberal memory.
Identity Without Class: Progress for the Price of a Subscription
On race, gender, and sexuality, The Guardian packages progress as consumption. Pride flags on banks? Glorious. More women CEOs? Revolutionary. Meanwhile, exploitation deepens. As Ash Sarkar has put it, this is “identity as lifestyle,” ensuring that systemic inequality survives beneath a rainbow veneer.
Gaza: Grieve, Don’t Mobilise
Each Israeli assault on Gaza is presented as a tragedy, not an occupation. The paper circulates shocking images and heartfelt editorials, but its politics remain tranquilised. Calls for ceasefire are moral pleas, not strategic demands. Amnesty International’s apartheid designation becomes “disputed.” By 2023, as Israel’s bombardment killed thousands, The Guardian urged “both sides” to “step back from the brink.” Opinion columns condemning Palestinian resistance as “self-defeating” vastly outweighed those situating it within anti-colonial struggle. Readers are invited to cry, never to act.
The Starmer Restoration: The Neoliberal Reset
Keir Starmer is the antidote to everything Corbyn represented, and The Guardian loves him for it. His abandonment of public ownership? “Fiscal realism.” His purge of left-wing MPs? “Discipline.” His hesitation to demand a ceasefire in Gaza? “Measured leadership.” This isn’t journalism—it’s cheerleading for the rehabilitation of capital.
The Guardian’s True Function: Stabiliser of Dissent
The pattern is consistent:
- Showcase suffering, strip away structural critique.
- Amplify scandals, delegitimise movements.
- Package hope, dilute demands.
This isn’t failure; it’s success. The paper exists to maintain liberalism’s moral self-image while ensuring power never feels truly threatened.
Break the Spell
For those who are serious about dismantling austerity, opposing imperialism, and organising collective power, The Guardian cannot be the anchor. It is not the enemy of the right; it is the custodian of liberal order. Its greatest fear is not our defeat; it is our victory.
The left must keep building its own institutions: radical media, grassroots networks, and unions unafraid of confrontation. The Guardian will mourn your losses and sneer at your wins. That is its role. It is not your comrade. It is your filter.
Embrace the independent media and abandon The Guardian for true enlightenment.
