So I may have to revise my dictum on whether owning X is good or bad for a political party/movement.

In January I was shouting at progressives to get back in the digital trenches. Log in, comrades, stop handing the most important room in politics to the right blah blah blah

For years, the story was that being chronically online cost the left the median voter. Peak-woke Twitter turned into a bubble where mental degeneracy was rewarded, and normal people caught on and were repelled.

Musk is turbocharging that process for the right.

X is as much of a wrapped reality for right-wingers, the way Twitter once was for us on the left. Those of them on the inside who are doing well on it feel like they're winning. For outsiders, it looks unhinged. Even if media people are also radicalised because they live on it, the public isn’t stupid.

In the UK, we just had a by-election in what should have been a Reform safe seat, but because of Restore, a party further right, was pulling radicalised voters from them, Farage couldn’t afford to soften and was stuck chasing the few thousand people who've radicalised past it, instead of reaching for the kind of mainstream voters he needs to win in the Generals. Those of us on the left know what a trap that can be (chasing the radicals- they are NEVER happy).

Ezra Klein said it on his podcast with Chris Hayes this month: Musk buying X may be a blessing for Democrats, and I think it may eventually be a blessing for Labour too.