Things Can Only Get Better

I still remember the heady euphoria of that day in May 1997. I was casting my first-ever vote for Tony Blair’s, “New Labour” party. I practically skipped out of that polling station while the synthetic pop beats of D:Ream blasted through the cultural airwaves.

It’s hard to listen to the song now – “Things Can Only Get Better”? Yeah, right! I can’t believe that we ever actually believed it. We genuinely thought we were voting for a bright new future. Instead, we were just served the exact same soup – same stale ingredients, same bitter taste. They just swapped out the serving spoon and started charging us for the bowl.

In 2026, it’s getting even harder to swallow.

Take for example the SNP – a movement that sold a beautiful, romantic dream of Scottish autonomy. Now famously bogged down in forensic police tents, missing campaign funds (and luxury motorhomes parked suspiciously on granny’s driveway in Fife). It turns out the road to national sovereignty is actually paved with… undeclared corporate receipts. But this isn’t just a Scottish glitch; it’s a global pattern.

From London to Edinburgh, straight across to the binary gridlock in Washington, the con is exactly the same. The Syndicate intentionally serves up two completely unpalatable, corporate-sponsored options.

Elections feel less like a democratic choice and more like trying to pick a designated driver out of a group of mates who have all been at the pub since midday. You don’t actually want any of them behind the wheel. You’re just desperately trying to calculate who is the least likely to crash into a ditch.

It’s an engineered standoff where they let us fiercely vote on whether we want to be devoured by a tiger or a shark. As if our democratic choice of predator changes the inevitable outcome.

I. The Political Franchise System 🗳️🏢

This isn’t a breakdown of the democratic system; it’s a design feature working exactly as the Syndicate intended. Globally, political parties are treated less like public servants and more like competing regional fast-food franchises. They might wear different corporate colours and wave different flags, but the basic recipe under the hood is identical.

Whether it’s the SNP dressing up corporate compliance in a tartan bow, or New Labour rebranding the status quo in London, the outcome never changes. We’ve fallen into the ultimate trap: the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” (or insert your party colour of choice) mindset. We drag ourselves to the polling station out of pure duty, blindly ticking the box for a party logo regardless of the actual candidate. Simply because we’re terrified of the “other lot” winning.

But as we uncovered way back in The Universal, true freedom isn’t the illusion of choosing between 42 different brands that are all owned by the same three conglomerates anyway. The Syndicate loves it when we are locked into a permanent, angry standoff over party politics. If we’re too busy screaming at each other over who is slightly less awful, we don’t notice the cold, hard evidence.

🔍 The Syndicate Dossier: The Electoral Capture The paper trail proves that no matter who wins the keys to the castle, the donor class always cashes the cheque. Fact-checking database records from the UK Electoral Commission and international public registries show that multi-million-pound political donations from property developers, hedge funds, and energy conglomerates systematically bankroll both sides of the political aisle during election years. The flags on the podium change, but the corporate legislative access remains entirely uninterrupted.

They use emotional theatre (constitutional arguments, flags and culture wars) as a mass psychological distraction. It keeps our collective eyes off the actual financial ledger while the local high streets rot, public services crumble and the cost of living keeps climbing.

II. The Citizen Jane Field Guide™️ (The Defiance Blueprint) ✊🗳️

Here is your new operational directive to reclaim your mind from the political game. No tribal nonsense. No corporate scripts. Just pure, independent mental autonomy.

System Disconnection Index
Autonomy Status
[░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 0/4 Strongholds Reclaimed
⬜ Tribal | ☑ Independent

• [ ] De-clutter the Feed: Mute the emotional triggers designed to keep you angry. When the debate turns into a shouting match over culture wars, mute it. They want your blood pressure high so your critical thinking stays low. 🔇
• [ ] Demand Local Accountability: Treat your local representatives like public employees, not untouchable rulers. Demand direct timelines and specific budgets for your community’s infrastructure. If they offer deflection or political spin instead of solutions, treat it as a failure to deliver and escalate your demands. 🗺️
• [ ] Unplug from the Party Line: Stop defending “your side” when they screw up. Partisan machinery relies on your blind loyalty to cover their tracks. Criticise everyone equally, hold every side to the same standard and break the cycle. 🧠
• [ ] Defund the Illusion: Refuse to spend your limited mental energy defending billionaires and career politicians who wouldn’t cross the street to help you. Reclaim your headspace for your own community. 🎯

Join the Rebellion: The Great Political Hack ✊👇

Spoiling your ballot or staying at home is a waste of a vote and the Syndicate loves a passive population. But blindly supporting a broken system isn’t working either. If we’re ever going to fix this, we need to completely rewrite the script ourselves. Opting out is surrendering and playing by their rules is a dead end. We need a crowdsourced mutiny to rewrite the system.

Your Mission: I want to hear your ideas for how we actually fix this broken political system. Should we ban all corporate donations entirely? Should politicians be forced to wear their sponsors’ logos on their suits like Formula 1 drivers? Or should we replace Prime Minister’s Questions with a mandatory game of Scrabble to test their actual vocabulary? Sound off in the comments below with your most radical, practical ideas for taking our democracy back. Let’s get the real conversation started! 👇

Citizen Jane x ✌️

https://youtu.be/V6QhAZckY8w?si=V13Yyz8JL9tkXa1W

The Universal Crisis Lifeline 📞

Mental Health Awareness Month might be officially over, but support is available year-round. Real humans are standing by right now on the other side of these completely free, confidential lines:

• 🇬🇧 UK & Ireland: Contact the Samaritans on 116 123, CALM on 0800 58 58 58 for men, or The Silver Line on 0800 4 70 80 90 for older adults.
• 🇺🇸 United States: Access local crisis care instantly by calling or texting a suicide and crisis hotline, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with the Crisis Text Line.
• 🌐 International: If you are outside the UK or US, immediately locate a verified, confidential local helpline tailored to your specific country or demographic via Befrienders Worldwide or the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP).

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The sooner we get Proportional Representation the better.

“More than 60 Labour MPs call for review of UK voting system”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgpzp87p11o

#ElectoralReform #ProportionalRepresentation #UKpolitics

https://www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Lifting-the-Lid-Publication.pdf

I have not yet had time to read this, but it looks most interesting.

#UKPolitics #ElectoralReform #Neoliberalism

HOW WALES VOTES: Swansea MS Mike Hedges says new Senedd election system “does not work” — and “any system is better than the one we used”

Mike Hedges, the Labour MS for Gŵyr Abertawe — the constituency covering Swansea and Gower — has called for an open public discussion on the way Wales elects its Senedd Members, saying the new voting system “does not work.”

The May 2026 election was the first held under Wales’s reformed electoral system, which expanded the Senedd from 60 to 96 Members and introduced a fully proportional model based on 16 constituencies, each electing six Members from closed party lists.

Hedges, who was re-elected in Gŵyr Abertawe, says the system failed on its own terms.

“The new system does not work — it was meant to be proportional but it was not,” he said. “The electorate generally did not understand it.”

His central concern is tactical voting. Hedges argues the election effectively became a two-party contest between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, and that this squeezed the vote going to everyone else.

“We did not have tactical voting — we had voters choosing between two parties, which depressed the votes of the other parties,” he said. “Those who thought they were voting tactically were actually not voting tactically. It did not work in five of the sixteen seats.”

He believes the effect was decisive in his own constituency, where he says fewer than 2,000 votes determined the final seat.

“Take 2,000 off one party and add it to another,” he said, expressing confidence in the figure. He argued that if Reform votes in the constituency had instead gone to the Conservatives, it would have produced a Conservative seat.

The criticism is notable coming from a Member elected under the very system he is attacking. Hedges took one of the six Gŵyr Abertawe seats, while Plaid Cymru took three and Reform UK two, as Labour‘s vote share across Wales fell to third behind both parties.

On the solution, Hedges is clear that change is needed — but stops short of backing the alternative favoured by the new Plaid Cymru government.

Asked whether he would support a move to the Single Transferable Vote — which Plaid committed in its 2026 manifesto to pursuing cross-party support for — he said he was open to reform but not to that particular model.

“We need an open discussion on the size of the Senedd and voting system,” he said. “I do not like STV, but any system is better than the one we used in the last election.”

It places him in unusual agreement with the Plaid government on the principle that the system should be reviewed, even as he rejects their preferred fix.

As a more immediate practical step, Hedges argues that better information would help voters navigate the system as it stands. “The most important thing next time is constituency polls,” he said — suggesting that seat-by-seat polling would give voters a clearer picture of the real contest in their area, rather than relying on national trends.

The new system was introduced through the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024, passed by the previous Labour Welsh Government. Supporters argued the closed-list proportional model would produce a chamber that more accurately reflected how people voted, and that the larger Senedd would improve scrutiny of Welsh laws.

Critics — now apparently including some within Labour’s own ranks — have questioned the closed-list element, which means voters choose a party rather than ranking individual candidates, and whether the public was given enough information to understand how it worked.

Whether Hedges’s call for a review gains traction may rest with the Plaid Cymru government, which has its own manifesto commitment to explore electoral reform — albeit by a different route to the one the Swansea MS would choose.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Mike Hedges warns Wales could face another election as Labour counts the cost of historic defeat
The Swansea MS reflects on Labour’s worst-ever Senedd result in the immediate aftermath of the May election.

Plaid Cymru largest party, Reform UK historic breakthrough, Welsh Labour reduced to nine seats: the new political map of Wales
How the first election under the new voting system reshaped the Senedd.

Plaid Cymru top the poll in Gŵyr Abertawe as Reform UK and Labour also take seats
The full Gŵyr Abertawe result, where Mike Hedges held on for Welsh Labour.