The Nigerian writer Ken Saro Wiwa once wrote a novel that simply does not age: Prisoners of Jebs. To rid Africa and Nigeria of its special criminals including deposed Dictators and the ever-present threat of their return to power and the troughs of corruption, African countries club together to create a special abode for them, an artificial Island eventually built off the coast of Nigeria. The story how the island prison was budgeted, funded, commissioned and paid for at extortionate prices is a study in the absurdities of corruption itself. But the best part of the plot is reserved for the interactions between people who in their whole life have built everything on their bombast and inflated sense of importance. Of course we would know little about how the dynamics between these people would play out had there not been an intrepid journalist who dared to navigate the shark-infested waters and get ashore in secrecy. His demise is his inability to merge into the island’s society: he is immediately recognised as being different and not belonging there because of the way he interacts. So he is imprisoned in a cage with good views of what is going on the island, and spends the rest of the novel as narrator of the absurd spectacle of people interacting who have no social skills whatsoever except bullying, deceit and corruption and self-validation by conspicuous consumption.

Given the rise of politicians such as Trump, Duterte, Putin, Erdogan, Assad, Kim Yong Un, Orban, together with ideologues like Bannon or Katie Holmes one feels very much like looking for a suitable island. The above list of prospective inmates is incomplete and there are a good number of other leaders who show evident disdain for the long-term future of their country and their people. Location is not an issue. Maybe that some of the recent artificially enhanced reefs in the South China Sea would just do the trick. A few securly installed webcams would suffice to monitor things, provide endless plots for reality TV shows, and prevent anyone having to suffer like the poor journalist in Saro Wiwa’s book.

But then one may not need to travel quite as far as the South China Sea nor think about the top league of destructors of ordinary peoples’ lives and futures. The bear pit of British politics since the BREXIT referendum shows how much bullying and vacuous repeat of stale messages is alright today in politics, and how much putting down of those who ask for a grain more of truthfulness, transparency and accountability is part of how the Conservative leadership seeks to protect its hollow fortress of ‘BREXIT means BREXIT’.

Whatever one may have thought about the Conservatives as a party before, over the last year its leadership has shown how much it lacks respect of and interest not only in the general electorate but also in their own party members at community level. All are treated with the same disdain and as dutiful claqueurs by the leaders of this party who themselves are so eminently blinded by their rush to the meat-pots of political power that they forget for what any democratic politician should be in his or her profession: namely to provide a convincing pathway for the sustainable development of a prosperous and fair society.

Tomorrow we will see how the British electorate responds. One should always have hope, but the results will be mediated by a flawed first past the post electoral system, constituency boundaries, a still likely apathy to go and vote in the younger generation, despite there being so much at stake for them, and a lopsided distribution of political power between England and the other nations of the UK.

One does not want a basically democratic political system to shipwreck entirely, but in many ways one can wish for it to run seriously on the rocks. The former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt famously once said that a politician who is not able to compromise is in the wrong trade. What would be beneficial for Britain is an electoral result (and a system which generates it) which forces politicians to come together, and transparently make balanced decisions which stand up to scrutiny by those who they are supposed to serve. These are all residents of the UK from all walks of life, and not only those who have the means to survive the car-crash that the BREXIT adventure looks likely to result in.

As for the others, who may be much closer to Saro-Wiwa’s original personality sketches of island dwellers, maybe that a fresh set of globally minded politicians with the interest of the wider public at heart would return to the project of a new artifical island.