My friend Stuart polishes the doorknobs in his home endlessly. Over and over again. Past the point of reason. Why? He’s afraid of contamination, imperfection, inadequacy. The smallest flaw in the finish is a mark, it seems on Stuart’s soul.

Stuart is deluded.

And one of today’s great questions is: how do societies grow as deluded as people often do? For grow deluded they do.

In this short essay, I’ll use the example of the UK. Which is about to have an “election”. I put the word election in quotes because the what people are deciding between is…meaningless. Just as meaningless as which doorknob Stuart chooses to polish.

The central debate in the UK’s election is how much to cut the deficit. The conservatives promise to cut it more; the liberals, less. But all three main parties have made the focus of their policies about cutting the deficit.

But the deficit is not problem at all. This is now a negative interest rate world. The world is literally begging creditworthy nations — like the UK — to borrow more. And not just for free. But it is willing to pay them to do so.

The UK does not have a “deficit problem”. It has a historic, generational opportunity. The once-in-a-lifetime chance to invest in anything and everything for better than free. Education, healthcare, transport, jobs…energy, roads, safety nets, insurance. The entire social contract can be rewritten — and what a surplus of capital globally looking for a shortage of investment opportunities suggests is exactly that it should.

But here is the problem. Not a single one of the three major parties proposes to do anything but cut the deficit. If anything, the political center of gravity in the UK is swinging in the opposite direction from seizing it’s great opportunity.

The UK’s fastest rising party is literally a National Socialist party. It wants public goods — education, healthcare, whatever — restricted to “real” Brits. Of course, the problem here quickly becomes apparent: who will decide who is “really” British enough? Is it first-generation immigrants? Only those with the right grandparents? Perhaps we must prove it through bloodlines. And so National Socialism descends into the vainglorious cruelty it is historically scorned for.

But. The UK’s National Socialist party is currently polling at twenty percent of the electorate.

So let me summarize. Here is a society that has a generational, historic opportunity to rewrite a better social contract. By creating leading-edge public goods. Next-generation energy, healthcare, education, transport, jobs. Not just “for free”. But for better than free. This chance will not come around again for at least another generation. And yet, what is rising in this society is not a groundwell to seize this great opportunity — but to fight so hard over the dwindling spoils of stagnation that National Socialism is now a reality.

Remember Stuart? It doesn’t matter which doorknob he polishes. What truly matters is whether he can conquer his delusion. And learn that it is the polishing that is preventing him from living the life he deserves. So it is for the UK today.

It is a deluded society. The “election” is a sham. Voters are not deciding between anything meaningful. Only between different shades of delusion. The electoral choices are just like Stuart’s doorknobs. And so whomever wins, the UK will surely lose. In very real terms. It’s potential for real improvements in economic growth will forever be stunted. And because that growth is made of human lives, the tragedy is as colossal as it is needless.

Can a society become deluded? It’s taken the UK less than a decade to reach the point above. So my answer is: yes — faster and deeper than we often suppose.

And so the real challenge for today’s leaders is this. Not to be mere merchants of delusion, nor peddlers of denial — and especially not shrewd wholesalers of manufactured anger, envy, and bitterness. But to develop the courage, wisdom, and grace to lead people to places that matter.