We are in a political wasteland

Something happened this week. I am not referring to an actual event, although there have been plenty enough of them. I am instead referring to a change in sentiment. We crossed a boundary. Things cannot be quite the same again. The sense that total irresponsibility based upon delusional levels of pretence might be the basis for right wing politics moved into mainstream thinking.

Those of us who have followed politics in more detail than is normal for the UK population have known for some time that the Tories and reality are unfamiliar with each other. Nothing about the world that the Tory supporter, let alone the Tory activist or MP, inhabits is in the slightest bit evidence based. Fantasy, prejudice and straightforward deceit (including denial of the lies they tell themselves) underpins the Tory worldview. We have long known that. But now it is becoming increasingly hard to hide that fact from the world at large.

Anyone with the slightest grasp of facts appreciated several things things about the Rwanda Bill this week.

The first was that it is about deporting a few hundred people from the UK, at most, when there are tens of thousands of refugees waiting for their asylum status to be decided, here in the UK. The whole Rwanda policy is, in that case, a distraction, or sideshow, or dead-cat policy. It solves nothing.

Second, in that case any government choosing to put it centre stage is either utterly unable to govern, or totally out of any real ideas, or is promoting an alternative reality that is completely politically irrelevant.

Third, the government has moved from pretending it will not lie to legislating lies into law. Rwanda is not safe. A law that says otherwise undermines the credibility of all our law.

Fourth, the government is willing to spend untold millions to promote this lie.

Fifth, this is just the tip of an iceberg. Once you realise that this government can pretend that Rwanda is safe then everything else it says has to be viewed in the same way.

So, Kemi Badenoch’s claim that there is no structural racism in healthcare has to be seen as the exact opposite of the truth, and the straightforward denial of reality that it is. There is but one aim for that claim, which is to ensure that the discrimination can continue. Denying it exists will not eliminate it: the goal is to perpetuate it.

And the decision not to appoint a new disabilities minister when there has been one at Minister of State level for thirty years is not a recognition that the problems of those with disabilities have now been solved. It is instead part of the parallel universe strategy that emerged in the Autumn Statement that says that those with disabilities must be as economically active as everyone else in society or their existence will be denied and benefits will be refused.

Pretence is everything in Tory policy now. Whatever is said, the opposite is true.

Whatever action is suggested means something else is actually required.

Whatever promise is made, the opposite will be delivered.

Claiming Rwanda is safe simply revealed a truth long known, which is that right wing politics in this country has left reality behind.

Most of us know that.

The only trouble is that our electoral system will continue to reward this detachment from reality.

And the Labour Party is, by refusing to embrace proportional representation, is enabling these fantasies and those who will continue to seek power on the basis of ever more preposterous lies.

And so, I sense a change of mood that is simultaneously an acceptance that right-wing politics has moved into the surreal, coupled with an acceptance that nothing is going to be done by those with the chance to prevent those in possession of powerful delusions from ever getting power again despite the fact that the vast majority of people in this country want nothing to do with this form of political madness.

As a result we face Christmas in political despair. There seems no hope of ending this oppression by those too irresponsible to govern, whether they are currently in government or seriously expect to be so soon. Both the Tories and Labour are too wedded to their gameplay, that beneath the facade requires active cooperation with each other to perpetuate their combined hold on power, to act in a way remotely akin to the needs of the country.

We are in a political wasteland. And there is no apparent way out. That, I think, is what an increasing number of people now realise.