This is not a political blog. Well, it’s not an avowedly political blog. As others have noted, the personal IS the political… but I generally try to keep politics out of these pages. I’m a gardener, FFS.
Unfortunately – at least, to those who’d prefer me not to – I can’t help commenting on the UK’s current electoral cluster-fuck. I find myself dazed, baffled and bewildered by the events unfolding in front of our eyes this evening.
Democracy: the people’s will
Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the point of elections (anywhere, not just in the UK) was to find a government that represented the people’s will and the people’s choice. FPTP, AV, PR, FUCTIFINO… whatever the system (each with its own unique pros, cons and imperfections), this is surely the aim of democracy.
So how is it remotely democratic, or representative of the people’s will, to install a government that contains not a single member of the party that commanded the most votes (2 million more than the nearest contender)?
The evil English
Looked at from the point of view of the various nations under the Union flag, it’s even crazier: the party overwhelmingly favoured (40% of all votes) by the most populous country in the union (England) is potentially to be excluded from government. Quite possibly by a coalition including parties from Wales and Scotland who sell their votes for guarantees that no public spending cuts will fall upon their homelands… but instead upon the evil, disenfranchised, majority English.
Well, well. As some people are fond of saying, you couldn’t make it up.
However you cast your vote, and whomever commands your political sympathy, I can only beg you to recognise that this scenario is as profoundly unfair, untenable and undemocratic as its reverse – say, the domination of Scotland by the tribally English conservative government of the 1980s. No democrat could regard that scenario then, or now, as right. I certainly didn’t, and don’t.
I’m not pleading for a Tory government. This is untribal, and apolitical. I don’t give a flying fuck if tomorrow morning I wake up to a government of Libs, Labs, Greens, Plaids and SDPs… provided there’s at least one Conservative in it. Anything else is an insult to the people who just voted.
In short, this is a plea for fucking democracy – the kind of representative fairness that the Liberal Democrats’ advocacy of electoral reform is supposed to address, and one of the things that lent them some credibility in the election campaign.
Or are fairness and democracy just another two things, like literacy and politeness, that we Brits have given up on?
Postscript: Well, the infamous ‘rainbow coalition’ hasn’t happened – thanks in no small part to the common sense of many senior Labour politicians, who perceived the mauling they’d get from the electorate down the line. It’s a relief, frankly, that common sense has prevailed.
Done it at last… and already I’m nervous. The weather has taken a turn for the worse today. If we get frost again, I think I’ll lose it completely. What kind of crappy year are we having??
