Westminster's broken system offers Scotland only either Tories or Labour

I’m scunnered with the lack of accountability in the supposed Mother of Parliaments that still considers itself a modern democracy, even as its representatives shuffle through archaic doors to be counted. I’m scunnered with how wages have stagnated as bills and energy costs soar while the wealthy boast record profits at the expense of their workers. And as I write this, I’m most scunnered with the knowledge that, outwith independence or revolution, there is no possibility of real change in this broken “family” of nations.

Sorry if that seems an especially defeatist tone to rock you with over your morning coffee, but it’s a particularly bleak time in politics.

Conservative politicians, I believe, often get a bit of a pass when it comes to their various indiscretions. Deep down, even Tory voters know on a fundamental level that they are probably giving their blessings to a bit of a bastard. The Tories didn’t earn the moniker of “The Nasty Party” in a vacuum after all.

It’s an expectation that comes with the blue rosette and the Etonian accent. And so little slips and stabs are hand-waved away without consequence because that is implicitly acknowledged to be part and parcel of the Tory package. Like with Trump’s machine gun word salad of lies, denials and fabrications that came with any press conference, it becomes a regular, desensitising part of interacting with the political right.

Labour, on the other hand, were meant to be the good guys – and being the good guys means being held to a level of scrutiny that isn’t often afforded to the villain. I grew up being told that Labour were “the good ones” – but for me the actions of the party that bounced headfirst into the Iraq War to satisfy Tony Blair’s ego were never the actions of “the good ones”. It took a long time to bury Labour’s zombified reputation as being for the people, but buried it now is.

I say this because I want it to be clear that this is not holding the Labour Party to a standard that I would not also hold Boris Johnson and his birthday bash besties. With any hope of a left-wing revival in the Labour Party thoroughly crushed, we are now left with nothing to watch but Labour and the Conservatives wrestling in the mud together. Popcorn optional.

Keir Starmer is seemingly stuck in a time loop and is desperately trying to bring back the golden hits of New Labour in the hope that something will stick – and with that, apparently, comes a full-throated return of Labour’s authoritarian dalliances.

New Labour have played this record before: overreaching legislation that aimed to monitor private communications, mandatory identity cards and widespread misuse of anti-terror legislation to challenge protestors and activists. These are all hallmarks of the party’s desperate days before the Conservatives settled in for a decade of right-wing rule in Britain.

Now we have deputy leader Angela Rayner (below) calling for a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to policing, and Keir Starmer repeating right-wing talking points about the Conservatives being too soft-touch on crime.

This does not appear to be a Labour Party that is ready to have conversations about the real causes of crime; poverty and a lack of support for young people. Instead they have taken the road of the political right and started eschewing complex, grounded solutions to the causes of law-breaking in favour of simple, ineffective solutions that can fit on the side of a red mug.

On the issues of climate change, Starmer seems firmly in the pocket of the polluters, having been revealed this week to have received major donations from motor industry chiefs. Now he has endorsed bringing legal injunctions against green activists to make protests illegal.

Labour were the party to bring in authoritarian legislation to exclude protests around Westminster in the first place, having grown tired of resistance over the party’s warmongering in the Middle East. In this respect, they seem to be a party as committed to despotic restrictions on protest and expression as their Conservative colleagues.

So when I say I’m scunnered with the United Kingdom, it’s because we are essentially trapped by our shoddy electoral system into giving the reins of power to one of these two parties who, on climate change and systemic issues around poverty, are so in line with one another as to dash any hope of change.

Climate change remains the single greatest threat to our future, yet both Labour and the Conservatives are in lockstep with their ambitions to use the police as a personal gang with which to crush protest on the issue. We know that more police on the streets doesn’t actually address the systemic issues that lead to crime, yet both parties are signed up to the doctrine of throwing new officers onto the pile until it’s big enough to cover the cracks.

So uninspiring are the choices for England that even Johnson’s rotten refusal to stand down isn’t enough to get voters motivated to back Labour in their droves. Such a trickle of support over such high-profile corruption is a story in itself.

Westminster has no answers to our problems, and has done its darndest to ensure anyone who challenges the status quo is kept far away from those green benches. There is no hope for Britain in its current form. Better to break it now and aim for better than let the charade slip on.