“In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing,” wrote George Orwell in his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’. Now, 70 years on, little has changed. Our own political discussions, debates and forums are undermined by a crippling lack of clarity, accuracy or, at worst, meaning. The year 2016, much like 1946, has proved tumultuous both politically and socially and yet, as it draws to a close, we remain ill-informed, confused and frustrated by the media’s attempts to explain what is going on.

This failure is emblematic of modern political discourse. We are told stories. These stories are simplified to a dangerous dichotomy of good and bad, right and wrong. They do not have to be true, or even consistent, but they have to be saleable. Increasingly, however, these narratives become harder and harder to buy into. The events in Syria are a case in point: previous conflicts – such as those in Iraq, where the government and media presented us with a classic good versus bad, the good being the UK and USA, the bad being Saddam Hussein (and there was a similar narrative for Libya, only with Gaddafi) – were sold to us on a lie, underpinned by duplicitous and oversimplified rhetoric. These lies have been detrimental to political discussion and have left us incapable of tackling complicated topics on a national platform. In Syria, there is no good and bad, there is only an ever changing, complex and deeply localised series of events. Rather than admitting such complexities, however, the actual horrors of Syrian conflict are wrapped up in a Cold War melodrama which does little to help understanding at home, and nothing to help those affected by the ongoing conflict.

This lack of honest discussion is perhaps best summarised by the recent political slogan ‘Brexit means Brexit’, a phrase so banal as to be masterful – of course, nobody has a clue what Brexit means. By claiming that ‘it’ means ‘Brexit’, however, the government allows the Leave voters to give it their own, personal meaning, without actually making any commitments. And yet when Jeremy Corbyn revealed that he was only 7/10 in favour of the EU, suggesting that the European Union was a complicated body with both good and bad qualities, he was lambasted for suggesting such a nuanced argument.

In modern political discourse there is no room for complex arguments – there is only the binary, as revealed by the ridiculous in/out nature of the referendum question. Rather than combat such disingenuous debate, however, the popular media, by which I mean widely sold newspapers, and TV shows with large audiences, not smaller, more personal forms of media such as those offered on social media, only serve to undermine healthy political discussion. This is demonstrated every week by the political zoo that is Question Time – the worst show on television. Each week, people take turns shouting offensive headlines at each other with no real consequence, argument or point.

The stories we were once sold no longer work. Our means of complex expression are now insufficient. In an increasingly anti-intellectual country, as suggested by Michael Gove shortly before 23rd June when he claimed we’ve had enough of ‘the experts’, we must establish a more honest political discourse in which complexity and nuance is understood as necessary, not as obstructive. The current, unacceptable standard of political debate will only serve to foster hatred and division, where statements such as Donald Trump’s “I have the best words” is deemed an acceptable response from a politician. We must demand better from our government and media otherwise we may find ourselves in a political culture in which rhetoric, not reality, is king