Autumn is here, which can mean only one thing: politics is happening again. Hooray! I don’t have to look at flowers and happy people in the sunshine anymore. Instead, I can go back to glowering at my monitor, shaking my head and muttering in despair.

So how is this season starting out?

The latest received wisdom in political journalism is that neither Labour nor the Tories are representative of most voters. Their policies generally fall into one of two groups: indistinguishable from each other or irreconcilably far apart.

There’s not a lot in the way of middle ground. This is great news for the Lib Dems should they ever remember they’re a political party.  It’s less good news if you believe in nuance, compromise or a functioning democracy.

But is it true? If so, it means our society has disintegrated into a hot mess of inconsistent ideology and raving tribalism. Such a state of affairs couldn’t be fixed by anything short of a revolution in the way we think about and implement our electoral system.

Being an optimist to the core, I don’t want to believe such defeatist nonsense. To prove things aren’t nearly so dire, here’s a quick rundown of some of the big issues and where the main two parties stand on them.

Brexit

Labour

Labour’s stance on Brexit is elegantly simple. There should be a referendum on the final deal, but only giving options that involve Britain leaving the EU. One of these options may be that Britain doesn’t leave the EU. Another is that we leave the EU in name only, which is a lose-lose for both sides and therefore the one everyone is most likely to vote for.

Probably the capstone on this pyramid of credibility is the age division within the party. The older members seem more in favour of Brexiting as Brexitily as we can, while the younger MPs think maybe we should reconsider. I suspect this may become a major theme over coming months, which could get very interesting.

I’m not saying I hope to see an actual physical bust-up between Corbyn/McDonnell and Watson/Starmer, of course. But I wouldn’t say I’m exactly against the idea. Will the aging CND contingent prove victorious, or will the post-Blairite centrists wrestle the Parliamentary Labour Party back out of the hands of Momentum? My guess is ‘no’.

The Tories 

Brexit still means Brexit. 2 years on, top Conservative Party scientists have learned some interesting facts that are have informed their Brexit policy:

1) No deal is better than a better deal. Anything else looks like either compromise, which is creeping socialism, or pragmatic recognition that we’ve made a bad decision and should admit as much, which is un-British.

2) There must be a meaningful vote on the final deal. However, to honour the outcome of an advisory referendum that wasn’t legally binding, the legally binding promise to hold a meaningful vote can’t be meaningful.

So, the policy is that we’re leaving, subject to a meaningful vote, so long as that vote doesn’t mean we don’t leave. In the 100% chance that this then ends up with us leaving, we’ll probably do so on the worst possible terms because otherwise we risk looking like we’ve been terribly foolish.

Summary

Both parties have a clean, cohesive vision for how to deal with Brexit. They present a clear choice between either doing the worst possible thing out of pure stubborn refusal to confront reality or making a minor change that is purely negative and will result in decades of racists whinging about how they’re the real oppressed minority .  We may or may not get to have a vote on which it is, although your vote specifically will only be meaningful if you pick the option the government is going to do anyway.

Public services

Labour 

Labour want to:

• Nationalise everything and magically make it work better.
• Put an end to Free Schools and the Acadamy system, funding more state schools and improving the quality of teaching with money from not raising taxes.
• Provide free nursery places for everyone, paid for by not raising taxes.
• Turn every hospital into a rehab clinic for drunks, because the misery isn’t going to end so you had better drink up.
• “Properly resource” the NHS, which may be different from ‘funding’ but if it isn’t will almost certainly be done through not raising taxes.
• Set up a Tobacco Control Plan to focus on mental health issues (nope, me neither)
• Put an end to the need for food banks by barbecuing the children of financial sector workers.

The Tories 

Compassionate Conservatism promises to:

• Sell more schools to under-performing Multi Academy Trusts.
• Allow more religious fanatics to brainwash kids in Free Schools.
• Make the NHS more efficient by exposing it to competition from foreign private health providers who can sue the British government if it funds the NHS in any of the areas of healthcare that could conceivably turn a profit.
• Fuel a mass-psychotic break in everyone under the age of 40 by continually cutting mental health services while allowing private landlords to jack up rents to evermore unsustainable levels, to avoid offending elderly voters who might otherwise have to pay a bit more tax.
• Illegally deport coloureds migrants in the hope that by the time anyone notices, said browns people will be dead, or at least too old and poor to do anything about it.
• Take a big fat shit in our collective mouths and tell us it is free chocolate provided by all the happy, healthy children saved by the decimated remains of social services.

Summary

We can fail at being decent people or succeed at being awful ones. Pick one.

Other

Labour 

As the economy is too fragile to withstand substantial increases to corporation tax, companies are instead going to have a percentage of their profits earmarked for spending on public services or redistribution amongst their employees. This is different from taxing them because it isn’t called tax and as such will be welcomed with open arms by business owners and investors.

The party will continue to be opposed to antisemitism in much the same way Nicholas Soames opposes chips. Maybe he does, all the medical advice is that he avoid them, but he really looks like he doesn’t. So, don’t be surprised if we see a catastrophic and messy split. Of the Labour party, that is. I’m 65% sure Mr Soames will stop eating before reaching that point.

The Tories 

The entire party is made up of people who are completely committed to their views, with zero chance of deviation even on pain of death. The two exceptions are:

• The Prime Minister, who doesn’t know what her positions are or even if she has any.
• Michael Gove, whose views are whatever seems most expedient at any given moment.

It’s highly likely that there will be a push to ban introspection, humility and compromise. The only barrier to this is the possibility everyone will adopt entirely unique positions, invent their own languages, and refuse to speak or learn anything else.

The optimistic side of the party is the hard Brexit crowd. They have the most sensible plan of anybody in parliament, which is to apply for European citizenship as soon as the whole affair is over and move to Provance with the loot they’ve made speculating on currency markets.

Summary

It’s all lies and we’re going to hell in a handbasket, all because the government was too spineless to take responsibility for its own cuts and instead blamed Brussels for a decade of economic masochism.

You can choose between The Judean People’s Front or the Popular Front for the People of Judea. One will ban men from having babies, whilst the other will let you vote on whether men should have the right to have babies. And this is all deadly serious, will effect your future, and nobody with any real power over it has shown the slightest sign of realising the absurdity of how far into satire our political process has sunk.

It’s going to be an exciting autumn! And that’s without even touching on the frog-licking craziness happening across the pond.