The Death Of Voting

Apparently the whole of the United Kingdom rose up on Thursday and lodged a protest vote for UKIP.

Or not.

Firstly, despite what the BBC like to keep forgetting, there are other countries involved in the United Kingdom, and they were not taking part in England’s local elections. Secondly, once again despite what the BBC want us to think, not that many people voted for UKIP. There are many stories that could be told from the election results, but instead the media seem bent on inventing one.

We’re told there was a “political earthquake” and that the elections showed that UKIP have arrived to be taken seriously as a political force. UKIP took control of exactly zero councils. They took an additional 161 seats across England. Labour -the largest current opposition party- gained 338 seats. In fact, Labour’s currently holds 2101 council seats in England, which is  more than both the Conservatives (1359) and Liberal Democrats (427) combined. There are two strong stories to be told here. We can point to the conclusion that the people of England en masse decided they would rather have Labour in control than either of the parties who make up the current UK government. We could point to the even clearer conclusion that, in losing a combined 538 seats, the current UK government have collapsed in local politics. But no, all we’re hearing is that UKIP, the party who came fourth, ‘won.’

This is how the “political earthquake” of UKIP’s results would be represented on the richter scale;

Ignoring the BBC’s frankly bizarre fetish over Nigel Farage, thursday’s  election wasn’t about the rise of UKIP, it was about the death of voting.

Voter turnout was at 36%. Compare that with the much talked about Indian elections last week (national rather than council, but still…) which had a turnout of 66.38%. That’s over 500 million people turning out to vote. Compare UKIP’s 163 seats to the total potential electorate of England, and we quickly see that it amounts to nothing more than a very small minority. At this point I’m upset that I wasted the tumbleweed joke so early.

The press are talking about UKIP’s results representing ‘protest votes,’ and the leaders of all three main parties have stood in front of cameras saying, with their most serious faces, that they will listen to the electorate and learn the lessons from people choosing to vote for the English equivalent of the Tea Party. What they are proving, each time they deliver one of these speeches, is that they’re not going to learn the lessons at all. And the media reinforce this with all this rubbish about protest votes. Let’s talk about this honestly, let’s take off the platitudes and the varnish; people who vote for UKIP are voting for a party who use bigotry and play on the politics of fear. But those voters will always be there. In all countries, in all societies, there will always be a minority of people who will vote for those issues. The difference in this case is that the minority views are not being dwarfed by the views of the rest of the electorate. Or rather -they are being dwarfed, but not in a way that the media want to talk about.

Just as there will always be a percentage of people who want to vote for the extreme views, there will also always be a percentage of people who simply don’t vote. People who don’t have any interest. And -though it can be annoying to think about- it’s something we can accept. Anyone who has ever arranged a wedding knows the difference between the amount of invites you send out, and the amount of RSVP’s you’ll get back. And within that, there’s the difference between the people who say they’ll come, and the people who actually turn up. There’s a drop of rate in everything.

But a voter turnout of 36% doesn’t represent those people. It represents the basic truth that people are simply sick of it.

Back in February I wrote the following;

At every single election since 1955 (when Scotland also voted conservative) the majority of voters have opted for somebody else. If we ignore ‘first past the post’ and the current system of parliamentary seats, and look at the actual number of votes, the Conservatives never win a majority. This includes the height of Thatcherism. More people vote against them. They get in because of the way the electoral system is rigged, and because the left wing of Britain splits into different factions that steal each other’s votes. Year after year, election after election, the people are voting for something different and not getting it.

Is it any wonder that young voters in England are drifting away from the political system? If you express your voice through the correct means at every election, to no avail, where do you go next? These frustrated progressive voters start to look for a home in Anarchism, or Libertarianism, or Stay-At-Homeism. Politicians want to blame the electorate for not turning up -a move that you couldn’t get away with in any other job- rather than engaging with them. In a decade that has seen the largest mass demonstrations in British history, we are told that the public suffer from apathy.

Twitter and Facebook on Thursday was awash with moral high-grounds and soapboxes. Every few minutes people were being reminded to vote. people were being told they were idiots or lazy if they chose not to. People were being told they have no right to an opinion if they choose not to vote (because that seems to be how democracy and freedom of speech is applied- selectively.) But I’m never convinced that patronising people, or calling them lazy and stupid, is really the best way to engage in a dialogue or change minds. Whilst I understand the motivation of these vocal people -I genuinely do- they must understand that they represent an ever decreasing group. In the wake of such low electorate turnouts, some of my friends on the left will start to mention that some countries make it compulsory for people to vote. I don’t really see that as a solution either. Taking a basic democratic freedom, and taking away the freedom, seems flawed, to me at least. Just as freedom of speech is about defending people’s rights to be wrong, so the right to vote -if it is to mean anything- has to be the right not to vote.

What we’re doing is letting politicians and the media off the hook. In blaming the electorate for not engaging, we’re blaming movie-goers for choosing not to see a film, we’re blaming readers for not picking up a book. Politicians have no real interest in listening to people, or representing people, because they don’t have to. They can rely on us feeling like it’s our duty to vote, even if there’s nobody on the ballot that we want to vote for. I’ve debated this point with activists for both of Scotland’s biggest parties and the result is the same -it’s the people who are to blame, not the politicians. Activists are energetic and passionate, and they manage to find the time to fight for their causes and knock doors for their parties, so they don’t see why other people can’t do the same. But is that any different to the cliche of the ”working class Tory done good,” the person who has made money for themselves and climbed the ladder and doesn’t see why other people can’t do the same. The people in politics in the modern day rarely seem to be in it to change anything. The politicians are there to keep things the same (with different colours on the ties) and the activists are there to tell people why they are right. People aren’t there for change, they’re not there to listen.

(There are exceptions, of course. I’m sure that one of the reasons I drifted towards the YES movement in Scotland is for that reason; To embrace politics of hope and change.)

We no longer look at our politics or our media and see “ourselves” represented. The working class faces in Westminster now are only those of the “I-done-it-so-can-you” sell-outs, eager to pull the ladder up after themselves. The BBC draws from the same ‘talent’ pool as the political parties. There’s always been a class system, of course. Those at the top have always tended towards coming from an elite niche in society, but in the past there was at least an illusion of more, there were faces, voices and accents that represented the people. There were people, to quote a superhero film, who had “tasted desperate.“

There was a time when the English working class was one of the most politically active in the world. So much so that the state had to be constantly creating laws based around treason and sedition in order to keep a lid on people. But generations have gone by now, with the media pumping inane bullshit into living rooms. We only have to look at our story-telling. Our folk-heroes used to be anti-establishment outlaws like Robin Hood, Hereward The Wake or Dick Turpin. But once those in charge were left to tell the national story, it became about authority figures working to protect the status-quo. Police procedurals, government agents or child bullies (The Doctor bucks this trend like the lovely, impish, smiling rebel that he is.) America gets stories about people who take on the system and win, or who work outside of the system for the greater good. Britain gets stories about people who will fight to put the Empire back together again.

The right-wing of English politics went to war with the working class in the 80′s. Thatcher and her Conservative parcel of rogues took on the unions because that meant taking on collectivisation, it meant breaking the spirits and the hearts of a whole class of people. There are regions of England that have been haunted with defeat ever since. The polling booth isn’t the only way to effect change, and some of the most important achievements in our political history have come through civil disobedience, but that notion died when Thatcher crushed the social contract. The notion that the working class can work together to get what they want died a decade before Tony Blair strode into Downing Street with the idea that the working class didn’t even need to be represented or listened to.

And -as my quote above illustrates- even if people bought into the idea that the only way to make change was to do it through the polling booth, they soon learned that they wouldn’t be listened to there, either. Election after election, the popular vote of Britain was against Thatcherism. Decade after decade- through both Conservative and Labour- all we had was varying shades of the enemy. Scotland has a voice, and a chance this summer to break away, but what has happened to the millions of ignored, abused and abandoned people in England? They’ve stopped believing the lies. They’ve stopped voting. But, after decades of the system working their magic, people have also forgotten they can make the change themselves.

So, yes, there is a huge problem in English politics, but it has bugger-all to do with a few people voting for UKIP. It has everything to do with a political (and media) class that simply doesn’t do anything to engage or represent the 67% who chose to stay at home. And those of us who do argue, and do care about politics, are too busy being high-minded and patronising to try and fix anything. We need to rebuild. Start again. People need to be engaged. People need to trust. People need to be reminded that working together is the key. UKIP will thrive by default for as long as the 67% stay away, but let’s remember the difference between cause and effect, and let’s stop letting the politicians off the hook. We need to be talking about why people stay away, and we need a media and political class that will try and engage with them.