Did you see Jeremy Corbyn enrapturing a packed rally with Shelley, with lines about lions rising after slumber? Or did you see Corbyn whining on to creepy music about the IRA? If you spent any time online in the last month, you will have seen some form of propaganda, but which? Which lies do you get? Who targeted you? With what? And why?

You probably won’t know, won’t ever know. Because that’s how we now do politics in Britain: in darkness, inside closed, proprietary systems that belong to multinational companies owned by billionaires. In 2017, our electoral laws, largely based on the campaigning landscape of the 1880s, simply don’t work any more. This isn’t the opinion of some leftie moaning on but the considered opinion of Britain’s leading experts in the field. It’s the findings of a working group set up by the LSE to investigate how digital campaigning has changed politics.

The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked Read more

The group, led by Professor Damian Tambini, consulted with regulators and leading academics and in April it published its findings. The law, it said, needed to be “urgently reviewed”. The “level playing field” that underpinned our laws, our democracy, had been destroyed. Something significant and momentous had changed, is continuing to change and threatens our entire political system. The government had to take note. And instead? Instead, we had a snap election. An election that, whatever you thought of the result, could not be guaranteed to be free and fair. Because in Britain, in 2017, it’s no longer possible to keep money out of politics or even to track it. It is not possible to know if third parties are funnelling dark money into key marginals or to know what money was spent outside the regulated period. It’s not possible to know what data campaigns are using, illegally or otherwise. It’s not possible to know which lies which party is telling about what to whom. And it’s not possible to hold anyone to account, ever, for these lies.

Tell the country Jeremy Corbyn has introduced a tax on kittens, or Theresa May snacks on them, and it’s a big so what?

Tell someone that nine out of 10 cats, not eight of 10, prefer your brand of cat food and you will need to prove it or explain yourself to the Advertising Standards Authority. But tell the country that Jeremy Corbyn has introduced a tax on kittens or Theresa May snacks on them or – random example – £350m sent to the EU will be spent on the NHS and it’s a big so what? “Please do not submit a complaint to us about political material,” says the ASA. “We won’t be able to take any action as it isn’t covered under the advertising rules.”

So… what? Politicians lie. It’s just now they lie to individuals, in secret, via closed platforms, with the potential of spending an almost unlimited amount of money to do so. In 2010, no UK political campaign used social media to any great effect. Politics was conducted in the traditional way: parties published manifestos nobody read, politicians had slanging matches all over TV and, occasionally, someone with a rosette would knock on your door. In 2017, that model is dead and buried. Theresa May didn’t need to go on “TV”, a medium with all sorts of annoying Ofcom rules, regulations and potential pitfalls. There’s this other form of TV these days, YouTube – you may have heard of it?

Here there are no regulations, no rules. Want a Corbyn attack video to play before a Peppa Pig video? Just pay your money (and the Conservatives did). On Google, Labour and Conservatives fought a bitter price war to displace top news stories about the “dementia tax”. But it’s on Facebook that the ground war now plays out. And who knows what’s happening there? This is the first election that anyone has even tried to track – the volunteer group Who Targets Me? made a valiant attempt – but it’s still only the tip of the iceberg.

Democracy dies in darkness, the saying goes, and there’s nothing darker in this world right now than Facebook – private, walled-off, unaccountable. It took a world war to bring out the last great electoral reform, the Representation of the People Act. What, we should all be asking, is it going to take this time?