Christopher Lasch in The Revolt of the Elites (1995): "It is (or ought to be) a sobering experience to contemplate the effects of a campaign against “racism” that turns increasingly on attempts to manipulate the media – politics as racial theatre."

*cough* #BlackLivesMatter

Reading Lasch is like reading about all the mistakes the Blair-Brown governments made, written before they made them. The wording he criticises is almost exactly the same as New Labour used (probably because he was critiquing the Democratic Party, which New Labour was aping).

c.f. Lasch refers to “the growing inability to believe in ... a politics that rises above the level of platitudes and propaganda.”

You can see this with Boris, but also Sadiq Khan practising a politics of assertion on issues beyond his remit while evading those he does control.