(Written but not published in 2016)

Yesterday, I was dismayed to find out that the government won’t allow footage from parliament to be used for satire. OK, so it’s not really news. Apparently, it has been this way since 1989, but it was discussed in parliament after a constituent requested that an MP raise the discussion of lifting the ban. The revelation surprised me; I presumed we lived in a country of free speech and minimal censorship. To be honest, it probably didn’t help matters that I read this news story in between a movie about soviet Russia and an episode of The Man in the High Castle, but I was left feeling, more than ever, that Britain seems to be moving more and more towards being a totalitarian state.

The first time I felt this way was during last year’s General Election. I had never felt more compelled to vote as I did in 2015, but the futility of my vote was soon realised when I awoke to a new Conservative Britain, despite most of those who I had discussed the election with telling me they were voting otherwise.  That’s when I began reading about the voting system we use here in the UK – a system so bizarre and difficult to understand that the most intelligent of voters can have difficulty explaining how it works. Our antiquated system, which quite frankly makes a mockery of the term ‘democracy’, basically forces us to choose between the top two or three Etonian clones and to decide which one will cause the least damage. The futility of my vote felt almost reminiscent of ‘We’ – a Russian dystopian tale in which the whole community comes together for the elections, knowing that the conclusion is already foregone.

As the Tory rule has gone on, the full horror of what Britain could become has unfolded. With talks of the Human Rights Act being scrapped, I have been left wondering what a Britain without this, or without membership of the EU, with only the Conservatives to lead us, would look like. Benefits cuts are leaving more and more people, particularly children and the disabled, in poverty. And how do the Tories deal with this? Of course, they attempted to redefine ‘Child Poverty’. This Orwellian-like ploy which simply would have changed the definition of the term ‘child poverty’ was part of the plan to eradicate such a problem – but moving the boundaries of what defines poverty doesn’t help those still living in dire situations. And this isn’t an isolated case of barefaced dishonesty. The Secretary of State for Health has been accused of telling outright lies regarding weekend mortality rates in a bid to push forward his new junior doctors’ contract. When the juniors formed a resistance, and voted in their droves to reject the contract in its current terms, Jeremy Hunt, in true dictatorial style, unilaterally imposed it.

What this contract does is also in the true spirit of the totalitarian state; the proletarianisation of doctors. Proletariat is defined as ‘the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labour to live’. In the current climate of privatisation of healthcare, where large companies are buying general practices and running hospitals, doctors are losing their autonomy to run services as they see fit, with plans being put in place to exploit them to earn big bucks for the private providers. New plans also see the emerging dearth of doctors being replaced by cheaply trained healthcare workers who will unquestioningly follow stringent protocols and guidelines whilst the public are made to believe that doctors are no longer necessary or worth their salt. 

So the Conservative government is doing what Conservative governments do, only this time with a bit more zeal and a much faster reaction time from those affected. But why does much of this feel like a conspiracy theory? Perhaps because we can no longer trust our media to reflect the true extent of the problem. One of our oldest and most trusted news agencies – the BBC – has become a mouthpiece for the Conservative Government. As you may be able to tell, the NHS lies close to my heart, and the bias with which its issues have been reported by the BBC has been alarming. Not to mention the revelations of great whitewashes and cover-ups regarding high profile BBC stars, or concentrating on the government’s agendas of benefits scroungers and immigrants. It’s only when I’m travelling and watching a show from a foreign news agency that I am amazed to see a story that has been completely missed in Britain, or spun from a completely opposing angle. Our newspapers are also regurgitating lies and nonsense that come from the mouths of politicians, quoting them as truths.

The news isn’t the only aspect of broadcasting which alarms me. Like many of the younger population, I tend to pick and choose what I watch carefully, often opting to watch programmes online, rather than tolerate that which the broadcasting companies choose to show. On the unfortunate occasion I have had to sit through an hour or so of television, I have been bombarded by scaremongering stories of immigrants ‘forcing’ their way into ‘my country’, whilst being guilt-tripped into donating cash to dying African/Syrian/[insert your own struggling nation] children, from money that I will win in a daily lottery or online bingo site. I am also urged to remember to spend lots of that money on the latest commercial holiday or to put enough away that I don’t bankrupt myself with the compulsory splurge at Christmas if I want to feel like a true Brit. The masses are subliminally receiving these messages, being force-fed a balanced diet of fear, capitalism and feel-good charity just as if they had their own Telescreen from George Orwell’s 1984 in the room.

To keep our society truly ‘free’ we need to keep our eyes open and look beyond what we’re shown by those that rule and those that speak on their behalf. This is nothing new, however what is emerging is a British totalitarian state for the 21st century, and before any of us notice it, we’ll be voting the Tories back into power over a Britain that no longer has a free NHS and where the majority are living in poverty, looking forward to the next lottery draw. But we won’t know it because most of the media outlets won’t tell you, and those that will certainly won’t be satirising it as it unfolds in the houses of parliament.