Livre d'Or

In general I share your pessimism. I see no point in voting Conservative because the party as it currently stands is not in any useful way upholding Conservative values, they're doing the exact opposite of keeping the UK fiscally stable and making sure British companies are seen as reliable business partners. And they're actively against human rights and the rule of law. So they have no advantages to offset the massive harms their policies are measurably causing.

I don't think it's self-indulgent virtue signalling to vote Labour (and I equally don't think it's inherently supporting murder of disabled people to vote Conservative). Both Labour and Conservative voters support the traditional ethos of their respective parties; people vote Labour because they associate Labour with a strong welfare state, and Conservative because they associate Conservative with a strong economy. But as far as I can see, neither of those associations is really true any more.

Why vote Labour to "keep out the Tories" if they just vote with the Conservatives or continue and extend bad Conservative policies all the time, including on issues that traditionally split left/right? Why vote Labour to stop the Lib Dems from collaborating with the Tories, when Labour collaborate just as much even when they're supposed to be in opposition, not coalition?

If this were a more normal election, then I would vote primarily for a constituency MP instead of for which party's manifesto I prefer (manifestos are always lies anyway). And in that case Huppert would be the obvious choice. You may well be right that voting for one decent MP given the chance is the least worst option. In the context of Brexit and the NHS crisis, though, I feel I absolutely have to think nationally more than locally, I have to look at parties.

Maybe a party of Brexit and austerity, which nevertheless will commit relatively trivial spending to schoolchildren (free school meals, EMA) is better than a party of Brexit and austerity which won't supplement education in even that minor way. But lots of my informed, politically savvy friends seem to believe that the Labour party is not a party of asset stripping the country and attacking human rights to make very rich people even richer in the very short term. If they're not, even if they're a bit incompetent and prone to infighting, that makes them a clearly better option than the Conservatives, but I just don't see any evidence that the Labour party has actually done anything in the right direction any time this century.