Eton College’s most admirable attribute, I’ve long thought, is its motto. A Latin phrase, but not one that would have been familiar to the Romans, Floreat Etona translates as “May Eton flourish”. Contractually speaking, that’s watertight. No bombast and no virtue-signalling. Good luck anyone saying that particular institution has hypocritically betrayed its aims or principles. This place is about this place. It’s like someone proclaiming: “I’m all about me!” – it steals the thunder of any accusations of selfishness.

On consulting the college’s website, however, I discovered that Floreat Etona is not, strictly speaking, its motto. “Eton’s motto is often thought to be Floreat Etona,” it says, “… but Esto perpetua (“May it last for ever”) came into usage if anything a little earlier.” I’m not sure what the “if anything” is doing for that sentence. I think if anything it’s superfluous. That’s to say, I think it’s a superfluous “if anything”. If anything. The website carries on: “In fact, neither phrase is officially a motto; they are unofficial creations that, over time, have stuck.”

I reckon my admiration is still warranted though. “May it last for ever” is tonally pretty similar to “May it flourish”. It’s continuing (or initiating if anything) the general theme of the institution standing for nothing at all other than its own existence – and it’s surely reasonable to take the absence of any motto as signifying that as well. To me, that’s admirable because it’s honest.

The only subjects on which either element of this political cartel is trustworthy are their opponents’ failings

After all, there are so many institutions claiming to stand for more than that – every aristocratic coat of arms emblazoned with God-fearing Old French (also a sexual position), every company or product with a tagline or mission statement, everything that’s been branded or rebranded. “God and my right.” “I serve.” “Nation shall speak peace unto nation.” “Vorsprung durch technik.” “Because you’re worth it.” They’re all proclaiming, with varying degrees of plausibility, that they stand for something other and more than merely continuing to be. But do they really?

In most cases, no. That’s the depressing truth. Obviously businesses don’t. We know they exist to make money, no matter what else they claim they’re “passionate about”. But it’s the same with so many organisations. Having been called into existence, whatever their other ostensible aims, their priority is to continue to exist. Like organisms with an instinct to live, institutions will find people willing to run them and those people will find reasons to keep them going and then strive to do so.

The Conservative and Labour parties are good examples of this. They’re always saying they stand for all sorts of stuff, but self-perpetuation remains high up the agenda. And perhaps, with the new loyalty pledge it wants its MPs to sign, Labour is finally admitting it. It reads as follows: “I pledge to work for the achievement of a Labour-led government under whatever leadership members elect. And I accept a Labour-led government is infinitely better than any other election outcome.”

I’m not sure the “infinitely” is needed in that sentence, if anything. Has any government ever elected in the UK really been infinitely better than its predecessor? Better to an infinite extent? That would be an infinitely greater improvement than if it were merely a trillion times better. Nevertheless, linguistic carping aside, this is pretty frank: the thing called Labour must prevail, regardless of what that thing actually consists of. Floreat Labour.

This has all been a bit much for the MPs who left the party last week on the basis that they no longer like what it stands for. But if organisations want to survive in the institutional ecosystem, they need to adapt and be flexible about their stated aims. Eton started off as a school for the poor.

The Tory party is masterful at this. Its survival is currently the entire focus of our government and is monopolising the time of the European Union’s most senior officials. At this point of crisis, with its MPs also beginning to desert, the party is receiving the very best care, whatever it costs the country or the world. Its determination to prevail no matter what disasters that causes is awe-inspiring.

I would say, since the whole Brexit cataclysm was triggered in the interests of Tory unity, that, out of these two dangerous institutions, the Conservative party is the worst. And, for Labour, that’s the end of the debate: it’s Labour or the Tories. So, if you don’t like the Tories, you’re Labour. And if you don’t like Jeremy Corbyn, you’re a Tory. The Tories agree and are always saying that, if you don’t vote for them, you’ll get Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.

The two organisations collude in this binary view of politics, just as they have long colluded in maintaining the first-past-the-post electoral system that’s crucial to sustaining it. The UK is a two-party state. Its totalitarianism is mitigated by the sincere enmity with which those two organisations view one another, but, with the country careering towards disaster in their hands, that’s scant consolation. During the Wars of the Roses, the houses of Lancaster and York were fanatically opposed, but that didn’t really provide a meaningful choice of governmental approach.

The only subjects on which either element of this political cartel is trustworthy are their opponents’ failings. The Conservatives say the current Labour leadership is institutionally antisemitic and dominated by adherents to the extreme left of the range of views Labour has historically represented. The Labour party says the Tories are cruel incompetents in thrall to corporate interests and lacking an ounce of sympathy for the suffering of the vulnerable. What if they’re both right?

The current system in which we’re forced to pick one or other of these options or waste our vote, and any MPs deserting either cause are condemned as traitors, is dysfunctional in the extreme – and the treachery lies with the two parties that conserve it.

History will say this country had a deadline by which to fix its political system and that deadline was “before the Brexit referendum”. We missed it. Britain is heading towards disaster because it is not primarily Britain that either the governing party, or the only party with a chance of replacing it, really hopes will flourish.