Because of moving around an awful lot in my life, I have rarely voted. Now that I’m in Edinburgh I am settled enough to have voted in the last couple of elections and, now that I’ve done it, I find myself asking what the hell the point is.
That reflex response “Well if you don’t vote, you can’t complain” has always struck me as a load of old bollocks. In fact, never mind that, it is a load of old bollocks. When I first decided to cast my own vote, no matter how hopeless the party for whom I was voting, my reasoning was this: I didn’t want the slippery fuckers to be able to get away with it so easily. I knew I was wasting my vote in most ways, but I just wanted to head off that criticism, that smug “Well if you didn’t vote…”
Ultimately though, voting is bordering on pointless. Labour have moved so far to the right that the Tories are now fighting them on green issues and civil liberties – in other words, they have almost had to move to the left of Labour in order to differentiate themselves. It’s ridiculous. How the fuck does choosing between those two sets of snivelling lickspittles constitute any sort of meaningful choice? How does the election of Cameron or Brown make even the tiniest difference to our day-to-day lives? Tony Blair was essentially a Tory prime minister. And given it makes no difference whatsoever, why are we voting?
A vote is supposed to be a choice, a statement of belief and principle, your chance to make a declaration of political allegiance and attempt to influence the way in which the country is governed. Does anyone seriously believe that the current system, which is effectively two-party, offers us a choice in how the country is run? Does it bollocks. The influence of lobbyists, and hence wealth, in politics is so colossal that unless you promise to govern in a particular way, to play the game obediently, then the chances of your name even appearing on the ballot paper are basically nil. As Tony Blair so brazenly demonstrated in the buildup to the war in Iraq, they are absolutely not accountable to us; not in the slightest.
So when we vote, what are we doing, legitimising the status quo? It certainly feels that way. We are basically giving the impression that we genuinely believe that choosing one special interest sock-puppet over another represents a meaingful choice for us and one which we are willing to take seriously. Surely voter turnouts dropping to record-low levels makes more of a political statement than dutifully making an appearance and marking your box like a good little boy. How, after all, can they claim legitimate mandate to govern when a mere twenty percent of the populace endorsed them? They will claim it anyway of course, and blame us, but it feels like a stronger, more meaningful statement than simply choosing one bunch of toadies over another identical bunch of toadies who happen to wear differently-coloured ties.
The problem, really, is the alternative. If you refuse to vote, which I think it a perfectly reasonable decision and one with which I am seriously toying at the moment, then how do you remain politically active? I guess you join activist groups, participate in message boards and sites that debate political issues, and generally cherry-pick your participation in terms of single issues rather than sign up to any one morally bankrupt political party or another. It’s politics by aggregate rather than partisan allegiance, which seems dead in the water at the moment. Here anyway. Look at The States and partisan tribalism has more or less engulfed the political process, and why? I guess because they genuinely feel that picking Obama or McCain or, until recently, Clinton over the others will produce genuinely difficult outcomes for the country.
Over here, does anyone seriously believe Cameron, Blair, Brown or any of these twits are significantly different from one another? The great success of the Scottish National Party this year has been their mediocre inoffensiveness, allowing them to play the nationalist card, which in much of Scotland translates as borderline racism, and thus mobilise the bovine masses without seriously threatening to do anything meaningful which might upset anyone. Or, more significantly, make them give a shit one way or another.
So what are we left with? I am increasingly finding myself in a situation where I can barely justify voting. I would rather a pathetically low turnout, as political statements go, to pottering along voting for this or that identikit besuited mannequin and continuing to give the impression that they are actually doing their jobs. They are not. We are not being listened to. Our votes are fucking meaningless. And what can we do, spoil the ballot? Maybe. Not vote? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be happy with that at all, it just doesn’t feel right, and of course it is impossible to differentiate between the indifferent non-voter and the pointed non-voter. So it may be difficult to make a statement that way, but it is very close to being the only real statement we can make as an electorate. Is this too disillusioned for a Friday? Sorry. Have some gin and forget I ever said this.
Fela Kuti – Government Chicken Boy
Billy Bragg – NPWA
Radiohead – Electioneering
