In a sign of worse things to come Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, announced a general election for July 4th while reading out a robotic speech as he was drenched in the rain. A protester played a song on a loudspeaker in the background: "things can only get better."
Things can only get worse. The polls point to a total wipeout of the Conservative Party, losing between 200 to 300 of their 365 seats in 2019.
The reason is pretty obvious: the largest electoral mandate in English history given to the Conservatives was wasted.
No, it was even worse than that: it was totally betrayed.
Given an 80 seat majority in the House of Commons to deliver a smooth and clean Brexit to take back "UK Independence", they instead delivered a slow and soft break from the EU. Rather than reclaim their borders, they oversaw one of the largest demographic shifts in history with over 600,000 people coming into the country every year of their fifteen years in government and over 1,200,000 in the last year.
The Tories ran one of the most oppressive COVID regimes (although nothing compared to Jacinda Ardern), they introduced numerous hate speech laws, and jailed political dissidents for daring to object to it all. That's what "conservatism" had done for Great Britain, and the people are pretty rightly upset about it.
Perhaps, like New Zealand, Britons need a few hard years of hard left government to come to their senses.
There is no "saviour" for the UK in this election. Nigel Farage has decided to campaign with Donald Trump in the USA. Richard Tice of Reform UK purged the most right-wing candidates from his party after mainstream media hitpieces. The Conservatives don't seem to have a candidate for leadership that isn't a complete waste of space, and the MPs that aren't have already been kicked out of successive cabinets and marginalised.
All this has resulted in an online campaign consisting of two simple words: "zero seats."
The aim of "zero seats" is to seek the total destruction of the Tories so that space can be created for something new. Anyone can participate since the campaign doesn't encourage people to vote for a particular part, to spoil ballots, or to stay home. All of those are valid options for "zero seats" campaigners online. The only purpose is to punish this great betrayal of English conservatism. Fifteen years of power to achieve nothing. A decade and a half of the country drifting leftward.
Critics of "zero seats" rightly say that Keir Starmer would be worse, much worse than another five years of Tory malaise. They miss the point: the betrayal must be punished with total prejudice. The lesson must be learned. Without pain there will be no gain.
Things must get worse before they can get better.