Dark forces gather as UK politics heads for rock bottom

Imagine a game of Russian roulette, except every single chamber of the gun contains a bullet. Or a lucky dip, but without any prizes; just endless, brightly wrapped, empty packages. There is still a choice, in theory, of disappointments. But it’s hard to get excited about the prospect of exercising that choice. This is the miserable place in which many voters find themselves right now. If a general election were called tomorrow, and you wanted to vote for a party that could conceivably win, then outside of Scotland or Northern Ireland the choice would be either the party currently accelerating towards the edge of a Brexit-and-austerity-shaped cliff, or the one now driving Jewish families to wonder if they should leave the country.

Most people my age will have had elections where we have struggled with the choice available; where we’ve stood in the ballot box, sighed, and picked up a pencil reluctantly. And that’s normal. All parties go through good times and bad times, inspiring manifestos and duds, and the prevailing wind in any given party can’t always be in one’s favour. We have all occasionally gritted our teeth and voted for the party that doesn’t currently much  deserve it, but is still the one that remains our long-term home. These days all I really want is a party that isn’t virtually guaranteed to screw up something important.

But this is different. Roll up, roll up, for the choice between supporting a clueless Conservative government that admits it is now stumbling towards no-deal by accident, and a Labour party brawling like drunks in the gutter while periodically screaming abuse at passersby. Come on, pick a side; the party scuttling round European capitals begging the allies we have just kicked in the teeth to save us from ourselves? Or the political movement seemingly paralysed by its own inability to get a grip on a small but furiously determined cadre of angry cranks whose long fumbling of this internal crisis hardly bodes well for dealing with external ones? It’s devil or deep blue sea, and the sea has some pretty dubious objects floating in it; a choice not so much depressing as utterly, utterly rage-inducing. If the people get the politics they deserve, then lord alone knows what we did to deserve this.

And yes, there’s always the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens, or the nationalist parties, or even the Women’s Equality party. But unless your preference is genuinely for one of the smaller parties, the trouble with defecting to them in protest is that, in so many constituencies, that’s just a more long-winded way of tipping the balance of power towards Labour or the Tories. The same could easily apply to any new breakaway party emerging from Labour’s existential despair, which could split and fatally weaken the broad British left to the right’s advantage. All roads lead back to the same awful place: a choice between condoning what a Brexit death wish and seemingly neverending austerity would mean for the poorest, or rewarding a party in which one form of racism seems to have become so normalised that some won’t even recognise it as racism.

And all this as a new and dangerous far-right movement centred on the revolting Tommy Robinson, plus the toxic remnants of Ukip, is gathering on the sidelines. It feels like a dereliction of duty not to rally behind one of the mainstream parties in the circumstances; even if you’re past the point of caring who wins next time, someone else’s life may hinge on the outcome. Yet this fear of something worse seems increasingly to be all that’s left in the locker.

Dare to criticise Jeremy Corbyn as a natural Labour voter, and sooner or later you’ll be accused not only of “smearing” the leader, but of being morally liable for every bad thing that ever has happened or will happen under a Tory government. See those food banks, this vulnerable person who died after being sanctioned by the benefits system, those looming cuts to already lacerated public services? That’s on you if you don’t support Corbyn regardless of what he says, does or fails to do. God forbid he should take responsibility for creating a party that doesn’t make some of its longest-standing supporters feel morally tainted by association.

Even Momentum – which dared to publicly abandon its support for Peter Willsman as an NEC candidate after a tape emerged of him apparently challenging the very existence of antisemitism in Labour – faced a vicious backlash from its own members. It was a stark illustration of the difficulty facing a younger generation of Corbynites, who are no keener than your average millennial to upset minorities and are genuinely seeking a way out of this mess, but who belong to a movement encouraged to view any criticism of Corbyn or his friends and allies as a full-frontal assault on socialism itself.

Well, they should stick to their guns. It’s perfectly possible to offer progressive taxation, more social housing, renationalised railways and a welfare system in which people don’t visibly starve without an unwanted side order of Mossad conspiracy theories. The idea that you can’t have one without another – that unless we all agree that there’s nothing wrong with calling Jews Nazis, then leftwing economic beliefs will somehow die – is grotesque. And if Corbyn, laden as he is with the personal baggage and friendships of the last 40 years, struggles to separate the two in the public mind, then sooner or later the Labour party must find someone who can.

Theresa May’s last remaining hold over many Tory voters, meanwhile, is to argue that if they don’t back her regardless of what happens over Brexit then they’ll wake up under Corbyn, the man whose response to the Salisbury novichok poisoning seems to have frightened some Tory voters back into the fold. Take whatever unappetising mess is on offer, or the bogeyman will get you.

But Tory remainers, whose votes could be decisive next time round, shouldn’t have to choose between what they (rightly or wrongly) see as two kinds of car crash. They are entitled to expect more than promises of stockpiling food on one hand, and what a former Tory party aide (who recently surprised me by confiding that she plans to protest-vote for Corbyn next time) describes as the “systemic crisis” she fully expects him to bring about. For her, it’s a choice between two roads to ruin, and the Labour one is preferable only because it might shake some sense back into the Conservatives.

It would be surprising if most Tory remainers were gung-ho enough to make such a choice, however, and frankly they shouldn’t have to, any more than natural Labour voters should be driven away from the party they want to support by the troubling views a minority of members feel free to express.

It is not asking for the moon and the stars to want a government you’re not actively embarrassed by; a party you’re not mortified to admit supporting in public. So don’t blame the voters when they have the temerity to notice your party is a train wreck. For pity’s sake, stop ramming yourselves quite so repeatedly into the buffers.

• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist