Big news. Hopefully it’s come to the UK electorate’s attention that there is indeed going to
be a snap-election on December the 12th 2019.
This must leave anybody with half a brain, with a wealth of mixed feelings.
Although my main emotions of fear and terror are indicated in the title of this piece. With the bitter, and even clandestine nature of the heartfelt hatred that has seemed to dominate this campaign, I feel that people can hardly be blamed for being turned off of British Politics. There is real bitter irony to be found in the fact that the marginalized groups who shall be those effected most by the outcome of this elections are typically those least engaged and therefore least likely to vote. Why should you partake in democracy, when it doesn’t seem to address or answer any of your concerns?
This dictators and despots easily get swept into power. It is all too easy to dismiss the wishes displayed in such surprising events such as Brexit or Trump being elected into the White House, as contemporary equivalents of the Peasants Revolt; it runs far deeper.
This is how the most vulnerable citizens can so easily be used to ‘buy’ votes – Thatcher’s short-sighted selling off of council houses during the 1980s is a most striking example – and even a reliance that the people that you hurt the most will not express themselves in a ballot paper is disgusting.
Our democracy appears to be so un-harmonized and disconnected with the electorate. It is all too easy for the croissant and quinoa munching class to dismiss that they are all too often as much of the cause as the solution to the current levels of discord. I won’t even beg the question of how much common sense you must need to be devoid of, to genuinely believe that you will ever create any unity by filling the political spectrum with zealots at either end.
IN my view, part of the problem stems from the fact that our adversarial political system is unable to cope with many facets of the media age and just how individualized it has allowed us all to become. There was a time, when it seemed to be much more accepted that everybody was entitled to their own view and that we’d all be required to compromise in order to move anything forward productively.
Now, it seems possible to simply disassociate yourself and disconnect your news discussions with anybody who doesn’t agree with what you think. Compromising is now seemingly seen as something of a weakness and that it is your own image as opposed to the reality of anything that you actually do that matters. The politics of the developed world seems to run along some sort of evangelical sense, in which we are almost encouraged to think that a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude is appropriate in shaping other people’s opinion. Let alone the fact that we must all turn a convenient blind-eye to how manipulative it is for us all. Being manipulative will almost inevitable end in having to be manipulated to get anywhere.
Principally I have just increased anger at the current appalling state of British politics on a domestic level, but yet more so in reaction to the perilous state that global politics seems to be entering itself into. Being a long cry from any historian, I do not see how parallels with the growing dominance of fascism in the 1930s and the current state of global powers. This is where the desperate our preyed upon with some false solution to their problems the often leads to a vicious attack on those less equipped to defend themselves.
So we shall be able to find out on Friday December the 13th how our Parliament stands. Superstition aside for what happens on this day, I really hope that we can witness a change of Government on this day. It is our first December General Election since 1923 and I hope that the cold and dark weather shall not mean that people are deterred from voting. As said, with the current tawdry state of British Politics, I can empathise with anybody being disaffected from voting. Yet, this is a most vital opportunity to do something about the amoral powers that be as they currently stand. How any sane person can see them as the correct answer to Brexit – they created this mess and the responsibility for over 3 wasted years should not be deflected to anybody but the Tories – and how they can trusted to solve it or anything else is beyond my sanity.
If you want to ensure that just your own putrid needs are catered for, vote Conservative. If you care for anything beyond number one vote for somebody else and under our First Past The Post political system, the Labour Party has to be the only answer.