1/ I've been watching politics for 50 years. Starmer's silence on the transition extension is profoundly abnormal. No opposition party has ever been pushed into tactical silence on a key issue in this way. It's the kind of tactic to be adopted in a managed democracy.

2/ Managed democracies work through control of most of the mainstream and social media, and through the whipping up of divisive and irrational tribal nationalism. Brexit Britain displays many of the characteristics of being a managed democracy, and Labour is behaving accordingly.

3/ In a managed democracy genuine opposition is presented as disloyal and unpatriotic. The media launches into a campaign of frenzied intimidation employing the crude tribal emotionalism of fascist propaganda. That is what Labour fears now, and why Starmer is so cautious.

4/ Like boiling frogs we have slipped into something that is much closer to a managed democracy than to a healthy one without really noticing it. Our task now is not so much to defend our democracy but to restore the democracy we have already lost.