AS TORY election strategies go, “people versus Parliament” is possibly the most dangerous and divisive narrative since “strivers versus skivers.”

Both soundbites tear at the fabric of civilised society, but while David Cameron was content to turn the working poor against the unemployed, Boris Johnson seems prepared to destroy democracy itself to hold on to power.

Parliament has indeed been locked in conflict for years — but against the government, not the people. As Jeremy Corbyn says: “Parliament is the people.”

And ever since Labour took away Theresa May’s majority in 2017, MPs have deployed a wide range of parliamentary guerilla tactics against ministers to devastating effect — “lawfare” as it’s called.

From forcing meaningful votes and humble addresses, to seizing control of the order paper and passing emergency legislation to block a “no deal” disaster, lawmakers have expertly held the executive to account using unprecedented parliamentary innovation.

In doing so, they’re expressing the will of the people they represent. There’s no mandate in either Parliament or the country for any version of hard Brexit offered by May and Johnson.

Both sides of the EU debate united earlier this year against May’s deal, with thousands of Remainers and Brexiteers cheering peacefully together outside the Palace of Westminster when she lost her first meaningful vote — “MV1” — by the largest margin in history.

And Johnson’s tweaks have made the deal even less acceptable to most people, with its weakened protections for workers and harder border down the Irish Sea.

Blaming MPs for not “getting Brexit done” completely misses the point. If the government, stripped of its majority, had tried to build consensus across Parliament instead of bullying it into submission, we could have left the EU months ago.

But that needed the kind of soft-Brexit compromise that would split the Conservatives from top to bottom. Instead, May tried to blackmail MPs into backing her “blind Brexit,” as Tony Blair described it, but failed after they called her bluff that “no deal was better than a bad deal.”

Johnson has taken a similar approach, achieving similar results. And just like May, he’s called a general election to win both a mandate for his vision of Brexit and the parliamentary majority necessary to deliver it.

Just like May, he looks set to fail. But by casting himself as the embodiment of “the people” battling against a Parliament set on sabotaging their decision to leave the EU, Johnson is undermining the whole principle of democratic accountability — and opening a space for the far right to thrive.

It’s worth pointing out that many, if not most, people don’t understand the difference between government and Parliament — so while ministers inflict misery, MPs collectively cop the blame.

This confusion is clearly deliberate. And the less that people know about the parliamentary process, the easier it is to disempower them politically.

Of course, a daily diet of headlines denouncing MPs as “traitors” and accusing them of “betrayal” and “surrender” only helps to undermine public trust in democracy.

But for all their faults, our elected representatives are accountable directly to us at the ballot box. If we don’t like their decisions, we can choose new leaders to represent us instead.

We pick our MPs — and then, through the party system, they pick the prime minister, who then chooses a team to form a government with the full power of the state at their fingertips.

But, crucially, this means the government is accountable to Parliament, just as MPs are accountable to us. State power is kept in check, ultimately by the voters.

Parliamentary accountability takes many forms. Numerous select committees of MPs conduct inquiries into state and commercial activities, taking evidence from experts and grilling ministers and corporate bosses about policies and outcomes.

Each government department faces regular questioning in the Commons — the most famous being Prime Minister’s Questions, but all secretaries of state need to think on their feet under interrogation from backbenchers and shadow ministers.

And all parliamentarians can ask the government written questions about anything it’s responsible for — in effect, mini freedom of information requests to ministries — digging up shocking statistics and other embarrassing information for the media to cover.

Put simply, Parliament — alongside the courts, which enforce the laws Parliament makes — is all that’s protecting us from the tyranny of unchecked private and state power.

But it can only do that effectively if it retains public respect, trust and support. Without that, nobody will care about damning select committee reports or excruciating ministerial meltdowns in the chamber. The government will get away with whatever it likes.

That’s why turning the people against Parliament is so pernicious, especially with a Prime Minister in the pocket of hedge funds, oligarchs and foreign powers, who thinks nothing of breaking repeated promises, lying straight to voters’ faces and using racist, sexist and homophobic dog-whistles to whip up fear and hatred among his core supporters.

And by channelling this hatred towards the only people who can keep a check on his power — the legislature and judiciary — Johnson is following the Trump playbook of presenting himself as the solution to a rotten political system, despite embodying that system himself.

It’s the political equivalent of throwing a brick through someone’s window and then selling them a burglar alarm.

What is to be done? First, we all have to defend our democratic process, as imperfect as it is, because the alternative right now is authoritarian rule by an elitist sociopath whose ambition since childhood has been to be “world king.”

And second, we all have to engage with our democratic process, because we are within touching distance of it delivering the first socialist government since the end of the second world war.

Barring any serious mistakes by Jeremy Corbyn and his campaign team over the next five weeks, we should see most of the Remain vote unite behind Labour as the only party offering a credible — if perhaps unlikely — path to stopping Brexit, via a second referendum.

At the same time, the Tories stand to lose much of the Leave vote under pressure from the Brexit Party, who will continue to highlight how bad Johnson’s “sell-out” deal really is.

And, when push comes to shove, many former Labour voters who backed Leave and feel let down by the party’s shift from soft Brexit to second referendum will return to the fold, given the clear choice between Johnson’s chlorinated-chicken deal and the chance to vote for a Corbyn-negotiated alternative that protects the NHS, jobs, workers’ rights and the environment.

Never has it been so obvious that our only options are socialism or barbarism. And it’s not every day we get the opportunity to kick the Tories out of Downing Street.

By promoting a strong message of hope and change, fighting hard for each and every vote, and exposing the lies thrown at Labour from all directions, we can have Prime Minister Corbyn by Christmas.

The alternative is unthinkable — not just because we’d still be stuck with Johnson for at least another five years but because Parliament would be so damaged and discredited that there would be simply no way to constrain him, while his empowered and emboldened far-right fan-base find new people to pick on.

It’s already become a cliche, but this is the most important election of our lives. Book as much time off work as you can, crucially on polling day itself, and campaign for a Labour victory as though your life depends on it.

Because, the lives of many people — especially the weakest, poorest and most vulnerable — do depend on a Labour victory. We can’t let them down.