Parallel worlds

The election draws ever nearer, and a Tory majority looks all but inevitable now. I hope I'm wrong (as I was wrong about No Deal Brexit happening at the first attempt earlier this year), but I doubt it.

The United Kingdom is now a country where people live in various stages of denial. The most delusional are those 42+% of voters who will put their cross next to Conservative candidates on Thursday. There is no doubt that the Tories have pulled out the 2016 referendum playbook (as written by their special adviser, Dominic "Once upon a time, spending three years in Russia would have automatically excluded me from any kind of job like this" Cummings). The level of lies and misinformation is now out of control - even for them, but this country - slow-cooked as it has been over the past 40 years by an increasingly right-wing, foreign-owned media - is now increasingly incapable of spotting the truth. Which of course is exactly what those at the top want.

Not that Labour deserve much credit. They continue to back FPTP because it's the only way they'll ever get to wield unshared power, and it's increasingly obvious that Corbyn and the Left have no interest in building consensus with even the moderate wing of their own party. They would rather labour (sorry) in opposition for decades at a time with the occasional once-in-a-generation shot at power than build a more gradual, nuanced programme through coalitions - not a good look if you're trying to present yourself as someone with the country's best interests at heart. "For the many, not the few" their slogan goes - except when it comes to making people's votes more equal, of course.

The Liberals for their part continue to be tagged with the stain of the coalition, and while I understand what happened and have forgiven them for their part in it, many haven't. Mostly those on the left who see the opportunity it provides to denigrate anyone who doesn't believe in the purity of their vision. That said, Jo Swinson has run a poor campaign - trying to make it all about her, forcing this 'Revoke Brexit' argument that has backfired spectacularly and burying the one true thing that might have cut through in these volatile times - the promise of genuine, deliverable political reform - as an afterthought when it should have been front and centre.

In my opinion, nothing will change in this country while our current electoral system is in place. Everything else flows from here - the media's hold on the country would be far less if the Tories were unable to govern alone - if nothing else, forcing political parties to broaden their appeal, while Labour's progressive programme might have a chance of actually succeeding (albeit over a more realistic time frame of 10-15 years to allow the infrastructure to be restored or built to deliver on its promises, many of which I agree with).

The problem is, just when FPTP's limitations are laid bare for all to see, the very real prospect of democracy being stifled to the point of becoming just a sham, as it is in so many other countries from Turkey to Russia, grows ever more likely by the day.