I Cannot Vote for a Lie

By Wandelstorm

If I came to power; let’s just start there. If I came to power in the UK:

• No second jobs for MPs. You serve the people; not your pocket.
• Corporate lobbying banned. Politicians are not investments.
• Proportional representation. Every voice counted. Every vote weighted equally.
• CEO pay capped at 10x their lowest-paid employee. If they want more, lift everyone up.
• Tax avoidance becomes tax evasion, with consequences.
• No non-dom loopholes.
• NHS and welfare spending enshrined in law.
• Schools properly funded. Tuition free.
• Universal Credit that actually lets you live, not just survive.
• More social housing.
• Rejoin the EU, not for nostalgia, but because we belong to the world.

It’s not radical. It’s not idealistic. It’s just fair. Which is why it will never happen under a system built to protect greed. It’s not utopia. It’s just common sense. Which is why it sounds impossible here.

The Performance of Power

People imagine corruption as something shadowy: backroom deals, envelopes of cash, handshakes behind closed doors. But it’s louder than that. Flashier. More performative.

Corruption wears a poppy on its lapel and a flag on its Twitter profile. It says “We’re all in this together” while handing your future to its friends. It stages outrage over boats and bathrooms to distract from billions siphoned offshore. Greed doesn’t hide, it performs. It knows if it can make you angry enough, afraid enough, confused enough; you’ll stop asking the real questions. You’ll stop seeing it.

While you’re arguing over drag queens in libraries and migrants in dinghies, they’re selling your NHS. While you’re sharing posts about benefit scroungers, they’re funnelling public contracts to private cronies. While you’re defending billionaires “because they worked hard,” your rent goes up, your bills go up, and somehow, your wages stay the same. They weaponise identity, they vilify compassion, they divide the working class into factions and feed each one a different enemy.

The enemy is never them. It’s you, and her, and them, and those people over there. It’s propaganda dressed as patriotism. And it works.

They Vote for the Wolves

People vote against themselves; again and again. They vote for wolves in suits who promise “security” while hollowing out the very systems that protected them. They vote for billionaires who call them “aspirational” while laughing at them behind gated estates. They vote for cruelty as if it’s competence, for fear as if it’s strength. And I don’t blame them. Who wouldn’t cling to a story that at least sounds like control, when everything else feels stolen?

And they do it because they’ve been told it’s noble to suffer. To tighten your belt while the rich loosen theirs, to endure, to smile while you’re bleeding.

It’s blatant manipulation.
And it is heartbreaking.

I Cannot Vote for a Lie

They told me to vote tactically. They told me Labour wasn’t great, but “at least it’s not the Tories.” But how do I vote for something I don’t believe in? How do I look at policies that harm the vulnerable and say, “Yes, this is better”?

I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.

Because even if it changed nothing, it meant everything. I voted for what I believed in. Because I will not be used as a statistic in someone else’s spin.

That’s why Corbyn had to be destroyed. He spoke plainly, he cared visibly, he didn’t play the game, and that terrified them.

He was chanted at music festivals.
He had a massive majority of young voters.
And still; he lost. Not because he wasn’t wanted, but because the system didn’t want him.

That’s not democracy. That’s theatre. And the audience is starting to see the strings.

Who Draws the Line?

Try to create peace, and you risk control. Try to enforce freedom, and you risk tyranny. Try to fix everything, and you might break it all.

It’s the same with identity politics, gender debates, equality laws, so many sides fighting for liberation, but still inside the same small boxes. We need to stop building better boxes and start letting people be people. But the truth is, without deep moral clarity, without compassion, boxes are the only way to keep greed from devouring everything.

We are still ruled by the oldest forces:
Fear.
Power.
Desire to dominate.

We legislate not because we’re free, but because we’re not ready to be.

The Weaponisation of Crisis

We’re told we must sacrifice. Tighten our belts. Brace for impact. Because there’s always a crisis, isn’t there? A war. A virus. A shortage. The justification doesn’t matter, what matters is what they do with it. Because the crisis is rarely the cause. It’s the cover. Prices surge “out of necessity.” Profits soar “by coincidence.” And we’re handed the bill with a speech about resilience and pulling together, while the ones delivering it are pulling further away in chauffeured cars with offshore accounts.

Energy bills triple because of war, we were told. It was unfortunate. Unavoidable. Except it wasn’t. Because when wholesale prices fell? Ours didn’t. When the supply chains stabilised? Nothing was returned. Because the prices weren’t about need, they were about opportunity. They used the headlines to hide the hands in your pockets. And they call it economics.

It’s disaster capitalism.
Create panic.
Exploit it.
Keep the gains.

The Weaponisation of Basic Needs

Water. The one thing you’d think was safe from profiteering. But apparently even rivers are up for auction. Thames Water is collapsing, not because water stopped flowing, but because for decades, shareholders extracted every last drop of profit while neglecting the pipes themselves; the literal bones of the system.

Infrastructure crumbling.
Sewage pumped into rivers.
Leaks pouring away millions of litres a day.
And instead of reinvestment?
Dividends.
Bonuses.
Debt.

They took public necessity, made it private profit, and now they want you to pay for the hole they dug. Bills are going up. They say it’s to fix the pipes, but those pipes have been rotting while executives raked in millions. You didn’t spend that money. You didn’t create this mess. But somehow, you’re being charged to clean it up.
And where is the government?

Helping. Not you. Them.

We used to believe certain things were essential; food, heat, power, shelter; and that essential meant protected. Now? They’re profit engines.

Shell made $28 billion in profit in 2023. That’s not “good business.” That’s war profiteering in a tailored suit.

As war sent energy prices soaring, they didn’t pause. They didn’t say “this is a humanitarian moment.” They celebrated. They handed out bonuses like confetti and told you the cost was out of their hands.

And when the war eased? Prices didn’t. Because it was never about the war. It was about what they could get away with.

Meanwhile, Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, raked in billions too. This is the same company that forcibly installed prepayment meters in the homes of the vulnerable.
Elderly people.
Parents.
Children.

Locked out of warmth, mid-winter, by a corporation pretending it was “helping them manage their debt.”

Centrica calls it “support.” The kind that lets you freeze in your own living room if your card runs out.

And the government?
Complicit.

They call these profits “a sign of a strong economy.” They defend shareholder rewards while nurses visit food banks. They tell you it’s aspirational to pay more tax, as long as you’re not rich enough to avoid it.

This isn’t accidental.
It’s deliberate.
They want you to believe it’s all too complex to fight.

But it’s not complex.
It’s theft.

A Slow Murder in Broad Daylight

They aren’t failing the NHS. They are killing it. On purpose. In stages. Quietly, so you don’t notice until it’s too late.

They cut funding, then blame the staff. They cut beds, then blame the sick. They outsource services, then pretend privatisation isn’t happening.

But it is.
Bit by bit.

A once-world-leading health service, bled out for shareholder gain.

Ambulance delays.
People dying in driveways.

Junior doctors?
Paid less than a Pret manager. Your latte comes with more respect than your life.

Nurses?
Burnt out, broken, treated like martyrs instead of professionals.

Meanwhile, MPs sit on the boards of private health firms.

They vote for cuts, then profit from the collapse. They watch you drown in delay, then offer you a lifeboat, for a fee. It’s not neglect, it’s strategy. They want you desperate enough to buy your way out, they want the NHS to feel broken; so when they sell it off completely, you’ll say thank you. But here’s the truth:

The NHS isn’t broken because it doesn’t work. It’s broken because it does. It saves lives for free. It’s everything they hate: equal, humane, untouchable by market greed, so they must destroy it, because in a world where everything is for sale, a system built on care and dignity is revolutionary.

They Want You Numb

They want you tired, they want you confused, they want you to think it’s your fault.

Too lazy.
Too emotional.
Too entitled.
Too divided to fight back.

They want you hating your neighbour instead of the landlord hiking your rent. Blaming the benefit claimant instead of the CEO hoarding your wage. Mocking the migrant while billionaires bleed your country dry.

They talk of “aspiration” as they triple your energy bills and call it the market. They drain your schools, gut your hospitals, choke your unions, then sell you a dream that somehow it’s you who just didn’t try hard enough.

And when it all breaks? When you’re angry? They feed you culture wars. Something to scream at that isn’t them.

They criminalise protest.
Surveil your devices.
Censor the internet in the name of “safety,” while predators walk free and your daughter’s period tracker gets blocked.

And through it all, they smile.
Well-lit suits and soundbites on breakfast TV.
“Growth.” “Security.” “Stability.”

It is theatre.
While they rob you blind

The Endgame

I wish I didn’t have to write this. I wish this read like exaggeration. But if you’ve been awake these last years, you know it doesn’t.

If we do not rise above this manipulation, if we let fear continue to steer us, then the endgame is already here. And no flag, no slogan, no government grant will save us.

Only truth.
Only love.
Only rage that knows when to burn clean.

They don’t want you awake.
They don’t want you writing.
They don’t want you talking in kitchens and on trains and outside polling stations.

They don’t want your eyes to meet across silence and know: you are not alone.

They do not fear your vote.
They fear your clarity.
They fear your rage sharpened into action.
They fear you seeing the game for what it is; and refusing to play by their rules.

Because then, the game ends.