 This week saw two new leaders elected to marshal their respective parties. On Monday Joe Swinson became leader of the Liberal Democrats before, just 24 hours later, Boris Johnson won the Tory leadership and yesterday became the country's prime minister. Naturally, those two events drew attention from the politically engaged. After all, Swinson and Boris Johnson are politicians. Important ones at that. With wall-to-wall coverage, it was only natural that in our social media-driven age, people would want to voice their opinions. But something else also happened with those victories, specifically in a certain kind of response from a certain group of people. You see, what this all served to confirm, to me at least, is that self-appointed moderates are kind of, well, how can I put this? They're kind of weird. This was best expressed when within hours of Joe Swinson becoming leader of the Lib Dems, the Labour Party published a video attacking her political record. Now, importantly, it very much stuck to the facts. This shouldn't be surprising. Labour are, after all, a political party competing against the Liberal Democrats for votes. And if the shoe was on the other foot, the Liberal Democrats would do precisely the same. Similarly, left-wing journalists, influencers and Labour Party members did likewise, highlighting why they think the Lib Dems don't have the answers to Britain's problems. The primary reason being, they were in the austerity government which made so much go wrong, and of which Joe Swinson was a government minister. And yet, bizarrely, this upsets some people. The last time I checked, political parties compete for people's votes by highlighting the positives of their own offer and, hopefully, with honesty, the deficiencies of others. Of course, this being 2019, that apparently is no longer the case, at least not according to some moderates. You know, the people who think that Iraq is so far back that it should be beyond the pale for political discussion, but that Jeremy Corbyn was a founding member of the Bolsheviks, Hamas and the IRA. Take this from James O'Brien. Joe Swinson's election marks another milestone in the footballification of our politics. It's not permitted to be cautiously optimistic or even ambivalent about her. Failure to condemn and castigate is evidence of ideological impurity and will not be tolerated. Tolerated by who? With what consequences? What the hell are you talking about? Is this code really for a decent number of people committing the abominable objectionable sin of not holding the precise same opinion as you? To be honest, ambivalent completely sums up my attitude to Swinson. In fact, if it takes a Labour-Lib Dem coalition to get the Tories out, count me in. Which is really interesting, because that is precisely what Swinson ruled out within 24 hours of winning the leadership. What is more unlike the Labour video, she proceeded to lie about Jeremy Corbyn going on holiday during the Brexit referendum in her very first full day on the job, so much for the Lib Dems fighting back against post-truth. Then there was the insinuation that raising the issue of austerity is somehow sexist bro behaviour, which is kind of odd when you think that 86% of the burden of austerity fell on women. Also, let's put into perspective what austerity actually meant. Falling living standards, a crumbling NHS, falling home ownership, lost productivity for a decade, and oh yeah, the slightly minor detail of 120,000 excess deaths. And while apparently the Iraq war was too long ago that we can't really talk about it, austerity, last time I checked, is still ongoing. Of course, disagreeing with the political record of an elected politician who first entered Parliament as far back as 2005 was abuse, and it means if you do it, that you're scared. Sure, just like people were scared last month when they challenged Rory Stuart, or changed UK in February, or Tim Farron two years ago. That's the answer to this. It's in your hands. What is more when it comes to Miss Swinson, the criticism is entirely merited. After all, despite the fact that the Lib Dems claimed to be a progressive party, she backed the bedroom tax, voted to triple tuition fees after promising not to increase them, defended Zira's contracts, and remarkably said that it was legitimate for the minimum wage to be cut if the economy went into recession. She was an MP who used the term deficit denies and even wrote about how we should build a statue to Margaret Thatcher. She was a more than willing accessory to austerity, being more loyal to the Coalition Government's programme than many leading Tory MPs. More than being only fair to highlight all of this, given her new leadership, you would imagine it's vitally essential for journalists, particularly for those who don't like Brexit. Because the truth is, without austerity foisted on the country by the Coalition, Brexit likely never would have happened at all. It's almost as if attacking socialists, at least for people like James O'Brien, matters more than the truth. Similar sentiments were in evidence in response to Boris Johnson winning a day later, where people with apparently progressive values think that this person is the same as this person. Yeah, that's a really tough one. In this regard, the Observes Will Hutton offered a spectacular case study. Johnson and his charlatans now occupy government, his majority ex-UKIT members signing up as Tories. Next, the right-wing follow-through. Shame on momentum for sustaining Corbyn. Yeah, shame on Corbyn for depriving the Tories of a majority and voting down the withdrawal agreement three times. What a bastard. If only the Tories had their majority from before 2017, then we would have already left the EU. Perhaps it's a mix of the heat and early drinking, which doesn't suit you well. This garbage was actually relatively common. People basically saying, Boris is shit, but as a progressive, I could never vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Well, James O'Brien, author of How To Be Right, wing. I'm going to hazard a guess that absolutely minted journalists with valuable London property aren't Labour's target vote when it comes to a socialist message, just a thought. Which begs the question, why does centrist hate Corbyn so much that they'll effectively say him and Boris Johnson are the same, even when I suspect they don't believe it? Well, for me, it boils down to psychology. When you talk to right-wing commentators, they're congenial, surprisingly so in fact. That's because they know they disagree with you and that you want different things. With moderate, however, it's rather different. The reason? Because they see the left not as an ideological rival, but an existential threat to their very sense of self, identity and purpose. For decades, their position was about being the nice guys in the room, restraining thatchrism and the right. But that's increasingly meaningless as neoliberalism collapses. They don't know the questions to ask, let alone the answers. That's why I see the diatribes of people like Nick Cohen, James O'Brien and the Observer Editorials attacking Corbyn as a form of liberal comfort food, a warm blanket which, in the face of economic stagnation, climate change, demographic aging and automation, reduces systemic political problems to an issue of morality, where the good people, i.e. them, ensure that the bad people, i.e. everyone they disagree with, don't change a status quo where the 2012 Olympics were the apex of humanity. This mindset is an outgrowth of material factors. They're primarily affluent and comfortable, and tended to do very well out of the pre-2008 settlement, and so are obsessed with pretending it hasn't gone away or that it could be magically repeated if only we had grown-up politics. Which explains the default of defending figures like Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell, people who haven't uttered an original political thought since Jose Mourinho first entered British football. But asking for the proverbial grown-ups to come back, given the panoply of crises defining society, is itself a rather childish, impotent politics. As important, it doesn't mean anything, leaving those who recognise things dysfunctional from having either a coherent understanding of what's going on, or how to do anything about it. We're confronting crises of ecology, economics, society, media production, demographic aging. Responding to them requires the formulation of an adequate politics of the 21st century, not saying that those offering solutions are as bad, and indeed the same, as those who are responsible for the problems.