The analysis would need to go into some detail about politics and social change in Britain. I have no space for such detail here, but let me make a couple of points (see further Fairclough, 2000a). First, ‘New Labour’ abandoned the traditional social democracy of the British Labour Party to embrace the neo-liberalism of preceding Conservative governments (those of Margaret Thatcher and John Major). The effect was to produce a neo-liberal consensus on major policy issues within mainstream politics and a common political discourse – the associated tendency to exclude opposition is precisely the ‘social wrong’ I am addressing, Second, the infamous preoccupation of New Labour with media ‘spin’ (close management and manipulation of the presentation of policies and events in the media) indicates the growing importance of semiotic processes (political ‘communication’) in government. Thus, the form of politics which has developed with New Labour poses specifically semiotic obstacles to addressing the social wrong at issue.