The upcoming UK election is not normal. It comes at a time when the British people have already gone to the polls twice in the last two years (Election 2015, Referendum 2016) so they are suffering from democracy fatigue.

Theresa May has called the election to strengthen her personal position as Prime Minister. The Labour Opposition party is in disarray, and she hopes that this election will see them wiped out giving her both a strong majority, and what she will be able to say is a clear mandate to carry out Brexit according to her design. She also hopes that a stronger majority in Parliament will give her more control over her own party. She wants power, as she asked for in her announcement. (History: never trust a politician who openly craves power.) She wants to carry through Brexit without being troubled by Parliament.

Though she claims to be acting in the country’s interest, she is not. She is banking on a low turnout, and on a weak opposition to secure her position as Prime Minister. Neither of these things are good for the country, both are only good for her political ambition. She is driven by a desire to be, and to stay Prime Minister, that is all. It is what drove David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and look where that got us.

She has blamed Labour and the Liberal Democrats for making the election necessary by working against her in Parliament, weakening her negotiating position in the Brexit negotiations. This is not true. They have both voted with her and supported her in Parliament so far. She is clutching at straws to draw a thin veil over the truth: that this election is just her political manoeuvring and game playing.

May has shown herself to have little regard for Parliament. Parliament is the Will of the People. Nothing else is. That is how our representative democracy works. To have been forced by the Courts and civilian litigators to give Parliament a role in the greatest set of decisions our country has made in generations was an astonishing low point for May, her Government, and for our democracy. No Government should have to be forced in this way to defer to Parliament. Any politician worthy of the Great Offices of State should embrace Parliament.

Some important things to consider to contextualise the election:

1. At least half the nation voted to Remain in the EU, yet the only party that supports Remain is the Liberal Democrats, which currently has hardly any representation in Parliament. Remain voters are generally not expecting anything to stop Brexit now, but they want to vote for a softer Brexit, in particular one which allows free movement and access to the single market — both of which are patently good for the country. Labour has only just committed to these. Corbyn’s position remains unconvincing.

2. The UK relies on having a large second party in opposition. The first past the post electoral system means that smaller opposition parties cannot win elections. If Labour is decimated, and the Lib Dems gain some seats, the electoral system will fail to work: we will have one large party (Tory) and a bunch of small parties, none of whom could win an election against the Tories. So not only will we not have an effective opposition sitting in Parliament, we will not have a party able to take on and defeat the incumbent governing party in the next election. Regardless of your political views, if you appreciate democracy, this is not a good situation. No election should be a fait a complit.

3. It is likely the largest opposition party will be the Scottish National Party, whose leader does not sit in Parliament due to devolution. So the leader of the largest opposition party will not sit across from Theresa May in the Debating Chamber. The Leader of the Opposition being able to challenge the Prime Minister in public, live on TV, is a fundamental part of our democratic system. A small Labour party will not have the same credibility sitting on the Opposition benches.

4. A very large part of the population will be disenfranchised by this election. It is not clear what this means for the future. We will be in the unusual position of a very large proportion of society having nobody to vote for, and after June 8th nobody representing them. Usually people can identify themselves with one of the three main parties, or to one of the smaller parties, but Brexit and the evaporation of the Centre has left a lot of people politically confused. Consider the following demographics, before and after the election; who represents these people?

If you are Scottish, and pro-Leave

If you are Scottish, and pro-Union

If you are Centrist

If you are Tory and pro-Remain

If you are Labour, and pro-Remain

If you are Labour, and anti-Corbyn

And the list goes on…

Not only will these people be struggling over how to vote now, they are likely to find themselves unrepresented after the election. I am no statistician, but I’d guess this is well over half the population. What does it mean for our society to have so many people unrepresented by the political system? (I don’t know)

In the next election, in five years, the only obvious ways to remedy this are electoral reform, bringing in proportional representation so that the smaller parties are able to compete with the large Conservative party, or a new opposition party. In British politics a new party doesn’t usually work because it cannot become big enough to take on the governing party in a first past the post system. That is why British politics has been dominated by Labour and Conservative. And it will not be in the Conservative’s interest to bring in Proportional Representation.

If May wins a majority whilst Labour is wiped out, then her main opposition in Parliament will be from the Right not the Left, presumably leading her to counter that by trying to steal their ground. We already saw that with the emergence of UKIP causing the Conservatives to become more right wing to win back voters lost to UKIP. People, including May, suggest that she will be able to negotiate a softer Brexit if she has a larger majority after June 8th but it is more likely that she will end up being pushed towards a harder Brexit by a right wing opposition and a voiceless Left and Centrist opposition — that right wing opposition being her own back benches and UKIP.

So, writing as one of these people who feels that nobody represents me in this election, I am asking myself and others around me how we can make any difference. In 1997 people voted tactically and removed very prominent Tory MPs and Cabinet Ministers from supposedly safe Conservative seats. But in 1997 there was a charismatic leader to get behind (like him or not, he was). This time around we are leaderless. There is nobody leading the Centrist, pro-European, anti-Tory, anti-Corbyn voters, despite ‘us’ probably being at least the 48%, or in reality, a far larger percentage of the country. Or rather, the Lib Dems probably represent us, but sadly Tim Faron is no Tony Blair or Barack Obama.

As I see it, the only way we can avoid this country becoming effectively a Conservative elected dictatorship for the next 5–10 years is to become very organised, and very strategic. We will not persuade die-hard Tories, or die-hard Brexit voters to change their vote. However, for everyone else who is confused and wondering who to vote for, we need to avoid people either not voting, or splitting opposition votes.

A lot could happen in this election because protest voters are more likely to turn out than status quo voters. The biggest dangers to the Tories are that their core voters assume a Tory landslide so don’t bother to vote; that young people register and turn out to vote; and that Remain voters change party allegiance to vote for a pro-European candidate over their traditional party loyalty.

Looking at this, it is clear that strategic voting has the same role to play in this election as it did in 1997. Faron and Corbyn have made a huge strategic mistake by refusing to work together in any sort of coalition to overthrow the Tories. If they had come together, under a pro-Europe / moderate Brexit banner and asked people to vote strategically, they would have created a clear set of choices for voters, and made communicating these messages far easier. Not doing so will probably cost Corbyn his job, and deservedly so.

I believe the best outcome we can hope for in this election is that Theresa May wins but with a reduced majority, and cannot claim a resounding mandate. Meanwhile Labour is destroyed, speeding up their road to becoming an electable left-Centre, European party. It is not good to have an elected Government that only represents a small proportion of society, and has no effective opposition. That is not what the UK is about. This is less about Brexit, and more about the Sovereignty of Parliament.

We need to vote in order to weaken May and force her to respect Parliament. The hot topic is Brexit, but actually Brexit will come to mean so much more than just leaving Europe, it is about re-writing British laws, taxation, rights, the workings of our democracy, and the fundamentals of our society. Those decisions should be subject to the will of the people, which is embodied in their representatives in Parliament, as an ongoing process not just one election.

When you vote, or if you don’t, you are either giving Theresa May’s Government the ability to rule without Parliament, or you are forcing her to be subject to Parliament. If you vote for people who disagree with her, you are making it harder for her to force through major changes without scrutiny. That’s what June 8th is about.