The corruption of journalism and the corruption of politics march together. On the right, the former columnists Boris Johnson and Michael Gove threaten to review Channel 4’s licence solely because it embarrassed them. On the left, sympathetic “journalists” receive “lines, briefings, transcripts, invites to events and asks of support for certain content” directly from a Labour party WhatsApp group.

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If this were happening in any other country, we would have no hesitation in deciding that the local strongman or mafia boss was striving to control the free press. We might point to Venezuela, where the regime forces independent media owners to sell out to pro-Maduro interests. Or to Hungary, where Viktor Orbán ensured that 500 news outlets take a pro-government stance, compared with just 31 in 2015. In Turkey, Brazil and Poland, the story is the same. So what’s new when Johnson’s goons threaten Channel 4 News with a “day of reckoning” for highlighting his refusal to debate other party leaders on the climate crisis? From a global perspective, there is nothing unusual about British decadence. The scale of the manipulation may be greater but the intent is the same.

Nor is it surprising to find journalists turning on their colleagues to please their political masters. Liberal reporters are denounced by Sean Hannity and Fox News on Donald Trump’s behalf. Vladimir Putin has Dmitry Kiselyov to inspire and instruct thousands of hacks to denigrate NGOs and opposition politicians and journalists on Putin’s behalf. Authoritarian regimes always need propagandists to serve them, and journalism has always found fanatics and mediocrities, who were never going to make it on their own talents, willing to embrace substitute father figures and replace independent thought with a party line.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When Jeremy Corbyn cannot make a stand against racism, or explain his position on Brexit… it is not because the brutish Andrew Neil terrified him into peevish mumbles.’ Photograph: Jeff Overs/AFP via Getty Images

At the Times, Gove tugged the forelock to Rupert Murdoch so vigorously, it’s a miracle he didn’t scalp himself

Patriotic readers can find a grim comfort, however. No other country is as exceptional as Britain. Elsewhere, degraded journalists are the servants of power. In Britain, they are the masters. The contempt they hold for their former trade comes from the cosseted, self-regarding world of rightwing and, increasingly, leftwing punditry that has obliterated the line between politics and journalism.

Where would Johnson have learned the humility to realise that democratic politicians must expect to face scrutiny at an election? Certainly not at the Telegraph, whose managers treated him as a more important figure than the editor. Certainly not at the BBC, where you can still find presenters who call him “Boris”, a lovable panel-show character actor rather than a calculating politician on the make. As for Gove collaborating with a threat to Channel 4’s independence – “If we are re-elected we will have to review Channel 4’s public services broadcasting obligations,” a Conservative source told Buzzfeed – where would he have learned about the need for journalistic independence? Not at the Times, where he tugged the forelock to Rupert Murdoch so vigorously, it’s a miracle he didn’t scalp himself.

The double standards of their culture, their willingness to decry the censorship of students on campus, while failing to uphold the values of a free society while in power are exposed by their terror of Andrew Neil: a fear that goes to the root of Britain’s malaise. For to dismiss stories about fake news and the rigging of interviews as media navel-gazing is to miss a wider point. The process is the content of the 2019 election campaign. It explains why, whoever wins, 2020 will be a year of disillusionment as an embittered public finds the questions that needed to be asked weren’t asked or answered until it was too late for them to matter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Gove at a shipyard in Wroxham, Norfolk on 27 November. Photograph: Jeff Spicer/PA

To stay with the case of Neil. He isn’t a monster, just a journalist who does his research and asks hard questions. Politicians who have done their research and subjected their policies to hard questions have nothing to fear from him. When Jeremy Corbyn cannot make a stand against racism, or explain his position on Brexit, or indeed possess a position on Brexit, or tell us where he will find his £58bn pension payout to boomers, or how he would fight Islamic State, it is not because the brutish Neil terrified him into peevish mumbles.

Corbyn is not a victim, however thoroughly he has convinced the paranoid sentimentalists of the Labour movement that he is a new Christ, crucified by the powers that be and the Jews. He cannot answer because he is a representative of a breed of politicians whose success is built on extravagant promises that fool the base, and perhaps fool themselves as well, for Corbyn gives every appearance of being a dealer in fantasy high on his own supply.

Johnson is running away from Neil and other interviewers because he is no different. For all the contrasts in style, Johnson lies to his supporters and in all probability to himself. The Liberal Democrats have produced a list of 20 questions any competent journalist should ask just about his promise to “get Brexit done” and conclude a free trade deal with the EU within a year. Half focus on his impossible promises: “Can you identify a single comprehensive FTA (free trade agreement) completed by the European Union in under 11 months?” Half on the crisis that will be on us by June 2020: “Do you believe that businesses should stand down their no-deal preparations if you pass the withdrawal agreement?”

Johnson can no more answer them than Corbyn can explain his attitudes to Jews. To even consider them legitimate questions bursts the bubbles of fantasy that Britain’s political leaders cocoon their supporters in. Labour instructed the members of its WhatsApp group to “not talk about this group to anyone outside the group”.

What a motto for modern Britain that provides. Don’t talk to strangers from outside the cult. Don’t blow the gaff. Don’t admit we are propagandists but pretend to be truth-tellers. Don’t ask hard questions, and don’t answer them either. And when journalists complain, shut them out or scream them down.

• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist