Opinion | Hong Kong’s protest stalemate can only be broken by giving the city the democracy it deserves

What exactly does an endgame mean? In chess, it means the final stage of a game when just a few pieces are left. On Hong Kong’s chessboard, only three relevant pieces remain as we enter the endgame of our worst political crisis ever – Beijing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her establishment allies, and the millions of peaceful protesters.

Radical protesters who have progressively upped their game – laying siege to police headquarters, storming the Legislative Council building, then humiliating Beijing by vandalising its liaison office – are a fourth piece. But their relevance is their radicalism, not their ability to win.

The way each piece is positioned, there can be no checkmate, only stalemate. Beijing had a winning piece after the failed 2014 Occupy uprising which demoralised and divided the democracy camp. But it squandered its checkmate position by progressively eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy.

What next now that a fifth piece has muscled its way to the board with triad-linked mobs in white T-shirts savagely attacking train commuters in Yuen Long?

Lam could make the next move by withdrawing the extradition bill and ordering a judge-led inquiry into the entire mess she single-handedly caused. But she refuses to do either for reasons only she knows.