Thoughts on a shattered country

For a long time, I’ve known that moderates across the country were in trouble, but I didn’t realise that it would get this bad, this fast.

We have handed our country into the hands of people who are willing to stoop to unprecedented lows in the pursuit of success. In this campaign they made promises and then edited them out of the recordings, they posed as fact checkers, they mashed up footage of opponents to completely misrepresent them. These tactics aren’t new. But this time around, the British public gave a resounding thumbs up to a campaign built on misinformation and lies. Enabled by technology, which increasingly appears to be winning over our Stone Age brains and medieval political structures, propaganda was the biggest winner of this election.

In such a landscape, leaders have to cut through the noise with a clear vision. Johnson did so; Corbyn didn’t. As much as I regret that Johnson has been rewarded for his behaviour, I have to hold out hope that Corbyn is forced to take responsibility for guiding his party into disaster.

The communications industry has so much to learn from Corbyn’s disaster. By staying in London, listening only to voices that chimed with his own, by refusing to look outside his comfortable bubble, he has handed ex-mining villages to the Conservative Party.

We must all look beyond our bubble, seek out and listen to opinions that challenge our own, and ensure that we never fall for the hubris supplied by yes-men.