When members of the British Parachute Regiment joined the British state’s ‘Get Corbyn’ campaign

The shocking footage that emerged of soldiers belonging to Britain’s elite Parachute Regiment using a picture of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition at the time, for shooting practice while on deployment in Afghanistan in the summer of 2019, should have been a wake-call to anyone who may still have harboured tendrils of belief that democracy and the British state walked hand in hand.

In truth and in fact, democracy in Britain is but a simulacrum of the real thing, while the various institutions that underpin the British state and direct its actions remain steadfastly impervious to the very idea. For the sake of clarity, those institutions are the monarchy, judiciary, civil service, security and intelligence services, along with the armed forces.

The primary task of the political class in Britain is to serve the state not the people, and to maintain and uphold the invisible but rigid parameters within which political challenge or change to the status quo is possible. In this task, since the rise of right wing media barons such Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch, the political class has been joined by the Fourth Estate — the mainstream media — whose role has shifted from holding the powerful to account on behalf of the people to holding…