the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Anyone with even the merest pretence of being a supporter of democracy must be glad that George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election. Not because he’s an especially nice politician, but because of the fact that it demonstrates the robust health of our electoral system.

There are many things I find highly disagreeable about George Galloway and his campaign, but the fact is that enough of the voters in Rochdale didn’t and no matter how calculated one considers his campaign to have been, it was undeniably effective. Making it clear that he was targeting the Muslim community in Rochdale that made up 30% of its population and shifting the focus away from local or even national issues, but instead onto Israel/Gaza was many things, but one of them was being from the same election strategy handbook every other political party ever has used.

Only a credulous fool would deny the obviousness of that statement. It used to be a truism of politics that if you threatened benefits that targeted the elderly, you’d pay the price at the ballot box because the elderly were more likely than any other age-group to vote. Famously, Teresa Mayn’t forgot that piece of election orthodoxy and in the midst of campaign published proposals for social care that were quickly dubbed ‘the dementia tax’ and were even quicker abandoned.

Compo Clegg pledged not to increase student tuition fee’s before the 2010 election to get the student vote? Remember how that turned out!

How prior to the 1997 election Labour made it clear that they weren’t going to reverse any of the Conservatives spending cuts? That was a reassuring promise to wavering Conservative voters that everything would stay exactly as it was for them and that other people would continue to bear the brunt of those cuts. These are the three examples that spring immediately to mind, but there are countless more, perhaps not not so blatant as Galloways, but in a weird way that makes them even worse. But for me the undisputed master of this in the modern era was Margret Thatcher. From letting people buy their own houses and then turning them into shareholders of utilities the public had previously owned, her entire premiership was just one long bribe.

And that even now, as we’re told that Galloways election victory was a triumph of kind of divisive politics, one that categorises the electorate into nothing more than set of issues to be pandered to, the Chancer is planning a budget which promises tax cuts, benefit cuts but better public services! Labour are no better, finalising an election manifesto which will be full of warm words and assurances to do all manner of things for all manner of people, but will reluctantly conclude, upon election, that the reality of government doesn’t enable them to do it.

So all in all I’m not as disheartened by Galloways win as I otherwise might’ve been. His win is a perverse win for democracy, because the if other parties had got their acts together, this probably wouldn’t have happened. He only got just over 12,000 votes and I don’t know how large the electorate was, but only 39.7% of them bothered to vote, compared with 60.1% at the 2019 general election. Granted, a low turnout but the by-election wasn’t held at a moments notice, there was loads of publicity about it and still people couldn’t be bothered to vote! And with rumours of a general election in 100 or so days anyway, his victory will be short lived.

Not as short lived as Liz Trossack’s premiership but another future pub quiz question nonetheless.