I think this thing with Brand could end up being a watershed moment in terms of the culture war stuff in the UK. We were already well on our way into Fox territory with the usual GB News and TalkTV fare but this could be a real test of the strength of their messaging as having various people going to bat, or at least muddying the waters, for someone credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults is crossing a line in the sand.
It's also interesting to see where their priorities lie as they'd normally jump at anything with which to hammer the BBC and Channel 4 and they'd be totally justified in doing so in this case. They could be running with how corrupt those organisations are for once again turning a blind eye to this sort of thing, but they aren't. They're choosing instead to raise doubts and emphasise his defence of being some sort of smeared truth teller.
It is exactly the Dan Wootten thing all over again. After he did his bit about "sinister dark forces are trying to take me down cos I rocked the establishment to its very core by posing four times to get a suitably reverent picture of me putting flowers on the queen's grave" there were loads of talking heads (basically a list of the very worst 2nd and 3rd division journalists in the UK) rushing to defend him and spewing faux outrage. Something that at the time seemed rash at best while the very credible allegations had yet to be fully investigated. In fact I remember lots of people making a big thing of taking screenshots of those tweets so they couldn't be denied afterwards.
It's exactly the same with Brand but with a bigger, more international, class of scumbag rushing to defend him in keeping with his higher level of fame.
But agreed, this seems to be a new thing with people defending those perceived to be on their side regardless of how serious or credible the accusations. A strange position cos none of them are saying what he's accused of is ok - of course, we're not yet at the stage where they dare say "our guys are allowed to rape people" - but they're not really denying the charges - they're not in a position to, most of them just read it on the news same as us - they just go straight to deflection, claiming that it's the deep state trying to bring down the fearless truth teller.
I know all roads lead to this in my mind, but it is the same as Trump yet again... are they trying to stop him winning the election? It's kinda irrelevant, the main question is "is he guilty?" and we all know he is, cos we saw him do it and that's why a grand jury decided he needed to be indicted.
Is the Deep State trying to silence Wootten/Brand? Again, it's irrelevant, if they did the things they are accused of then they need to go down.
And though in many ways the right and left are no different, the one thing I do see in twitter arguments and so on is that people on the left do say "sure if Clinton/Biden/Obama is a paedo then they should go to jail" which surprises and takes the wind out of the sails of those they're arguing with.