We use conventions all the time – rules that you can’t legally or really enforce – but are ‘there’. Society would fall apart without them, and our lives are notably (if only slightly) poorer without them. There is no rule that says you should hold the door for the person behind you – but it is notably rude if you don’t. There is not order demanding you return your shopping trolley after you pack your shopping away – but society will (rightly) judge you if you don’t. There is compulsion on you to be a nice person, to wash, to not be a repulsive person – but there are societal consequences if you don’t. There are norms in place – if not rules.

But when braking those norms are no longer followed by consequences – the norm no longer exists. People might decry the breakdown of society because of this, and argue it ought to exist – but that doesn’t make it so.

But it’s not just in the mundane that we rely on conventions to function – we rely on them in Law and Politics too. But over the last decade or so, these conventions have been quietly breaking down. One of the reasons Theresa May’s government failed to navigate Brexit was because she stuck to the conventions. One of the reasons Johnson was able to overcome the same observed May faced was because he ignored Convention – or attempted to ignore what he thought was convention. The conventions of political campaigning on both sides of the Atlantic are also out the window – Trump’s actions on the campaign trail and characterisation of his opponents & Truss’s legal threats against Starmer for campaign speeches show us that.

And then today, the Times carried a story about a Labour canvasser who was subject to a deep-fake video, vindicated only because the police managed to find the original non-doctored video quite by accident. Those at the top of the political order have allowed no consequence for breaking norms for them – and now we are seeing the effects lower down the chain too.

The assumptions that we have been operating in politically have disappeared – and those who have continued to pretend they haven’t, or wish they would somehow magically come back have suffered for it. The Democrats who pretended that genuine good-intention could overcome calculated deception; or the Labour Government assuming that doing the ‘right thing’ will enough to expose the lies behind the emotionally-charged culture war rhetoric that is being unleashed on it are working under the old norms.

Those who lie and cheat and act in bad faith must face consequences. Sure – there will be howls of ‘unfair’ and ‘politicisation’ and ‘victimisation’ – but they will happen whatever happens. The first Action of AG Merrick Garland should have been to indict Donald Trump – but he didn’t because of worries of appearing to politicise the process. What happened? He waited 2 years, Trump cried politicization anyway and the prosecution was dragged out long enough for nothing to matter. Any time Farage faces the slightest consequence of his actions – he cries fowl; so why not make him face the fullest consequences of his rhetoric?

That may require a change in the way we do our own politics. That may even require us accepting that we can no longer rely on trust and good sportsmanship. If we don’t we only give these people the room to operate.

History tells us that the “normal right” will eventually capitulate to the far-right, who will in turn capitulate to the further right. It is up to those on the left, then, to stand up, to the fullest extent we possibly can. No one will believe us if we only talk about what we think is coming down the road – they will only believe us if we act with the urgency we say the situation requires.

Mere norms are no longer enough – and we need to be brave enough to create a new normal.