the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Of course I’m aware of the inherent logical contradiction in yesterdays blog, in fact the same one contained in all my posts that lambast people for not exercising their right to vote. Namely, that a in a democratic society having the right to vote also means having the right not to vote. It’s like democratic ying and yang.

Except not.

Voting carries with it consequences that affect more than just the individual. They also have a social responsibility, an obligation if you will, to the society of which they are a member. They have expectation of what services of the state will provide. We may not like everything the state does for us, but there’s also a lot we do like. What if the state decided that the reward for voting was continues access to the services the state funds, but that the reward for not voting was a termination of the social contract. It doesn’t happen but it should.

Imagine if a child turned up on her first day of school and the head said ‘Sorry and all that, but your Mum saw fit to exercise her democratic right not to vote so the state is freed from all obligations it was previously legally mandated to provide..”

And imagine that scenario being played out in hospital A&E departments, ‘I can see you’re having a heart attack, but sadly you didn’t vote and we’re underfunded as it is, so we have to priories our resources on those who did.’ Or when calling 999 you got a message saying ‘Your call isn’t important to us as we can see that your calling from a ‘phone registered to someone who didn’t think voting was important. Good luck with that. Bye.’

If access to government services was contingent on people voting I think it would have a beneficial effect democracy. I can’t see any downsides.

Because these things bother me, earlier on today I was wondering what would the election result looked like of instead of our current system -first past the post (FPTP) – we’d used the form of proportional representation used in the last European elections. The answer can be summed up in five words; very different, no Conservative majority.

And because I’m a lazy bastard, thankfully those nice people atThe Electoral Reform Society did all the heavy lifting, as the method used at European elections is a tiny bit complicated. But just because something is complicated, it doesn’t mean it isn’t fair, just that to properly understand it requires some effort is all.

Anyway, here’s what we could have had,

The Conservatives would’ve lost 77seats, leaving them with 288 whilst Labour would’ve gained 14 meaning 216 The really big winners wouldn’t have been the Lib Dems up 59 from 11 to 70 , nor the Greens jumping from 1 to 11! Neither would it have been the Brexit party who would gained 10 seats, bringing their total to, er, 10!

No, the real winner in all of this would be us, the electorate. It would’ve seen another hung parliament and probably another election, but why is that such a bad thing. If the electorate realize that their vote has consequence might it not focus the mind?

Indeed, as I pointed out only a few weeks ago,

If the Liberal Democrats were in the least bit serious about being democrats, they would’ve demonstrated their commitment to the ideals of democracy by having vigorously campaigned for a change the present electoral system with the Brexit party. Had this bizarre sounding but eminently sensible alliance been effective, democracy could have been the winner on December 13^th. If, the morning after the 2015 election, the Lib Dem leader, Vince Unable had launched the campaign for reform by highlighting the discrepancy between share of the votes versus number of seats in parliament of all main parties.

He could’ve made the point that voting reform was well overdue because whilst the Liberal Democrats had won of 7.9% of the vote, that this had translated into 8 MP’s, whereas the S.N.P had got of the 4.7% of the vote but 56 MP’s. The S.N.P., like democracy when it works to their advantage, but here’s the thing – democracy doesn’t have options, you can’t chose which bits you like or don’t like of the democratic process, either your in or your out. Yes, it’s all well and good wanting another referendum on independence, but when they had one, they chose to stay part of the UK. If you choose not to fight in English, Northern Ireland or Welsh constituency’s, fine. It’s your choice. You chose to be here. Suck it up like everyone else has to.

After the 2017 election, this would have even greater consequences, as we know only too well. The Liberal Democrats had won of 7.4% of the vote in that one that this had resulted in only 12 MP’s, whereas the S.N.P ‘s 3% became 36 MP’s. Had the made this an issue one of fundamental importance of democracy that the method of electing a government had to be if so it was to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the governed. Had they done so, there is every possibility that a vote on reforming the voting system to make it truly democratic could have taken place in the recent European elections which, if successful, would have had a far more beneficial effect on our democracy than overturning the referendum result and ignoring 17.4 million people.

Of course such an alliance would require the support of Nigel’s Farrago. if it was to truly cross the political divide, and not simply be a case of centre-left complainers complaining, they’d need his support to have any chance of success. Now leader of the Brexit party, but in 2015, he was leader of UKIP, remember them? With him, well, they’d be pushing at an open door. In 2015 UKIP won 12.6% of the vote which got them all of er….1 MP. Had the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party together campaigned for a fairer voting system then possibly. If Vince Unable had said in 2014, in 2017, or her election as Liberal Democrat Leader Jo Swindle had said, upon being elected Lib Dem leader, ‘I may disagree with the Brexit Party – in fact, I vehemently oppose everything they stand for – but being Liberal Democrat, I believe that if you voted for the Brexit Party, your vote should count for something. As a Liberal Democrat, but a democrat first and foremost I don’t believe that any vote should be a wasted vote. ’

 

But they didn’t with the result we are where we are because of it. Mind you, her plan to unilaterally revoke Article 50 was a vote winner, wasn’t it?

And what chance a change to the voting system, doing away with FPTP, a method used in one other European country, that textbook example of democratic excellence, Azerbaijan? As much chance as I have of winning gold at the next Olympics in the 100 meters. Why would any party that has consistently benefitted to from FPTP want to change it?

Just keep reminding yourself that ultimately it’s the 27.3% of the electorate who fucked us over, granted the voting system didn’t help matters, but a voting system first and foremost needs people to vote in it.

Unless you’re in Russia.

One of the most blatantly misleading falsehoods is the oft-repeated Conservative assertion that the last Labour government was somehow responsible for financial crisis. And that only due to the good offices of successive Conservative governments and the policies they implemented has this country returned to prosperity.

What, you mean the GLOBAL financial crisis, that affected most developed countires? That one? The one that because of the inter-connectedness of global money markets had a profoundly cataclysmic effect here in Britain. Those effects that were as unavoidable as they were inevitable, that one?

The one that was caused in part by highly speculative and risky financial transactions, the kind of things the chancellor and Mekon lookalike, former senior executive at Deutsche BankSajid David was flogging. That one?

The one that was helped in part by successive UK governments pursing ‘light-touch regulation’, essentially allowing the financial industry free reign from any government interference. That is, until, the collapse of the British banking system that years of ‘light-touch regulation’ had facilitated and suddenly the industry realized that actually, yes, they did favour government interface and the government – the taxpayer – bailed them out. That one.

It makes me mad that no-one calls them out on this, or if they do, it doesn’t make headlines in the same way a working parent eking out a few more quid by doing some cash in hand work is. Whets the difference? One is for survival, the other is greed. And Britain voted for five more years of it. Wonderful.

As the regular reader of this blog knows only too well, it’s not the people who voted in ways inimical to my beliefs and values I find worthy of the vilest of contempt, although they’re bad enough. But living as we do in a democracy, at least they played their part and participated.

It’s the people who never vote, they’re the fuckers who’ve fucked us. And it isn’t only at this election only! Fuck no, the fuckers have been busy – well not busy busy exactly – fucking us over since the 1950’s. That was the last time the turnout at a UK general election was more than 80%. How they measure this I don’t know, but presumably it’s the people registered to vote. I doubt very much that anyone examines the latest UK Census data and measures the discrepancy between adults of voting age there and on the electoral roll. But my point is that everyone who could’ve voted, didn’t

At this election Conservatives got 43. % share of the vote, on a turnout of 67.3%. Which means that less than ¾ of the adult population voted and of those, less than half voted Conservative. In what possible universe does this mean they’re ‘A people’s government’ as Boris’s Johnsons podium outside No.10 boasted on Friday? OK, yes, the people who bothered enough to vote Conservative, but given more people voted against them than for them, its not exactly what you’d call decisive, is it?

In fact turnout at every UK general election this century has never reached over 70%. One might be forgiven for thinking that disillusionment with the existing political system, its inability to carry out the referendum result, together with the oft-repeated claim that this was the most important election in generations, might have changed things.

But no! The fuckers would’ve appeared to have reared more fuckers to fuck us all. The result is that they’ve helped Boris’s Johnson put the con into Conservative.

Now that the initial shock of both the scale of Boris’s Johnsons victory and some of the places he was victorious has weaned off a bit I am struck by the following.

I know this is going to seem juvenile, mainly because it is, but I’m amazed that Jo Swindle has resigned as leader of the illiberal unDemocrats after not being re-elected as an MP. Who saw that coming? Based on the her core message throughout the campaign, I’d have expected her to refuse to accept the democratic will of the people in her constituency but instead say that they knew what her principles were and whilst they might not agree with her about them, she was going to stand by them. Her principles, that is.

She was also forever banging on about her values, as if by sticking to them, that was in and of itself a good thing. I’m sure Aileen Wournos had values she stuck to as well, but was that such a good thing ?

That was essentially her message to the whole UK electorate. I’m basically a bad loser and I’m appealing to all the other bad losers out there, to stop knitting their lentils and vote for me. She was the political equivalent of a child putting it’s hand over it’s ears and screaming,” I can’t hear you!” when it’s Mum tells her to eat their vegetables.

But now I’ve got to schlep all the way across London to Battersea to collect my car that’s been in for repairs. So bye

If Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream’ was a feeling, then it’d sum up perfectly how I felt last night.

This afternoon wasn’t any better either, having stayed up until 5.30am, gone to bed and waking up with feeling numbness and dejection that is beyond the descriptive power of words.

Quite how last night happened is both incomprehensible and easy to understand. Whilst describing the election result in these terms may seem contradictory, given that the whole election was itself contradictory, why should an explanation be any different?

Incomprehensible because vast swathes of the north of England were brutally decimated by a successive Conservative governments that through most of the 1980’s aggressively pursued a right-wing ideological agenda that destroyed the industries and communities that depended on them. I was lucky. I lived on the south, far, far away from the social vandalism visited upon the north. But I remember the miner’s strike, and the anger and resentment that caused. So it was inexplicable that so many voters in those same communities would have so short a memory of their own past to put their trust in a Conservative government ever again.

But then it’s incredibly easy to understand. A lot of voters in those communities may have born after the 1980’s, and will have heard about it from their parents or grandparents, not actually experienced it themselves. And if those voters feel betrayed by a political system that asks them a simple question and then did everything it could to thwart it, is it that much of a surprise that a politician who tells them what they want to hear gets their vote? If their parents and grand-parents think that on balance their lives can’t get any worse, that how they remember the Labour party of old isn’t the Labour party of now, they’ll vote Conservative. Indeed since the Blair years it has become progressively more focused on appealing to metropolitan voters and less about being the engine for social change it always purported to be.

I get that there’ll be a lot more written about the causes of last nights result, written by an intelligentsia who mean well, to be sure, but are inured from what a majority Conservative government will mean for the millions of people claim benefits, depend on food banks or have an existence rather than a privileged life. It will be discussed interminably by the same people, who by refusing to accept the referendum result, helped create the feeling of disconnect from the political process that caused last night. I do hope Gina Miller’s feeling thoroughly ashamed of herself for all those legal challenges she brought.

Unlike in 2017, I won’t be attempting to watch the election results come in, blog about them as they happen and drinking champagne whilst hurling abuse at the television, abusive which gets more abusive the more I drink at the television. Instead, I can hear a champagne cork pop, which means it’s time to stop writing and start getting ready for abject misery. But in the best traditions of ‘Blue Peter’, here’s one I prepared earlier….

One of the great moments of pleasure in any election night coverage is being up for a Portaloo moment. You know what these are, I mentioned them earlier. The chief Portaloo moment might come when the result of the Uxbridge constituency is called. Here, Boris’s Johnson is defending his seat with a majority of less than 5,000. There are plans afoot in Conservative Central Office that should he loose his seat, then a newly elected Conservative MP with a large majority will vacate their seat and thus trigger a bye-election

Chingford and South Woodford is the stomping ground everyone’s favourite politician, Ian Duncan’t Smith. He faces a challenge from young Labour candidate with impeccable credentials. She is young, was raised by a single mother in the constituency, graduated from Oxford, and has pledged that she won’t stand in any other constituency.   She also has an army of volunteers and other community activists supporting her. And he has a majority of less than 2,500. So that looks promising.

Then we have Anna Soubry’s Broxtowe count to look forward to, because with a majority of only 863, she better have kissed a lot of babies. With there parents consent, of course! Ah, dear Anna, who never uses one word when one hundred will do!

Another is the marginal seat of Fife. Where the majority is two! The result of this isn’t expected until late but its going to be hotly contested.

As does Hastings, where Amber Rudd is standing down. Everything is up for grabs here. Moving to the other end of the country we have Birkenhead, where Frank Field has been the Labour MP since 1979 and in 2017 election got 76% of the vote. He ‘s been remarkably effective as chair of the work and pensions select committee, so naturally he was expelled and is standing as an Independent

And poor old Chloe Smith in Norwich North. Wait you don’t know who she is? Maybe this’ll remind you!

This is the full horror. and her stuffing by Paxo starts at 6.19.

And last and hopefully very last is Chuka Umoaner. Hopefully his smug blend of playing to the gallery and opportunism will finally get the repeated kicking in the ballots it deserves. Cities of London and Westminster that one.

But there’s a chance that this’ll go the way of so many Glastonbury’s, you know, when you get there and they give you the full line of bands and work out who you’ll see, including acts in the theatre field and the green field. But the good intentions upon arrival are never what actually happens. You get totally shitfaced.

So to with tonight. Lets hope it’s not a re-run of election night 1992, when loads of us were expectantly hoping for the Labour win the polls had predicted – I was younger and more naieve – so my dissapointment was more acute. A combination of Aldi champagne, pickled onion Monster Munch, KP peanuts and chicken drumsticks will see to should prevent that. Hopefully.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of election night coverage on the BBC – I mean come on, who watches shITV on election night – let me first say that their graphics department is always hi-jacked by someone armed with C.G.I skills and a large amount of acid.

That seems to me the only plausible explanation of the BBC’s coverage; namely that only a drug addled lunatic would think that we are incapable of processing any information if it isn’t presented in a way that resembles a collision involving Hieronymus Bosch, Jackson Pollack, a paint factory and a 1950’s science fiction film.

But before that we have to endure the farrago of lots of people talking earnestly about not very much at all. The first results trickle in between 11pm – 1am and until then we are treated to the spectacle of people discussing an insignificant amount of results yet imbuing them with a nationwide significance that they don’t deserve.

The bullshit-o-rama is in overdrive. There’ll be the old favourites; “It’s far too early to tell”, “we can’t read too much into this yet, but…”, “we never do well here, so it isn’t a surprise”, “ I would just like to pay tribute to X who has been a fine servant of the people and didn’t deserve this”, “I think the voters were not voting on local issues, I know the area well and that’s not the impression I got talking to people on the doorstep”, “I think we had difficulty getting our message across” And there’ll be lot of new bullshit for this one election only,  along the lines of, “The voters aren’t voting according to traditional tribal loyalties. Their lending their vote for this one time for parties that they hope can deliver the Brexit outcome they want”, “One thing is clear though, the real winner ultimately is democracy”  They’ll be loads more of this bollocks until 1am and then it goes fucking mad.(Actually, now I think about it,  this’d make a great drinking game.)

Results just pour in. Of course we’re all hoping for a Portaloo moment, however younger readers of this blog might not know what a Portaloo moment is. It was the incredibly life affirming moment in 1997 when Michael Portaloo, a Conservative cabinet minister, lost his supposedly safe seat and provided the abiding image of the impending momentous Labour landslide. Who can forget his incredibly smug face trying not to look crushed as people cheered loudly his defeat. That’s what we’ll all be hoping for, and when I write ‘we’ I mean me. Now its nearly 5pm so I’m sober – I’m not a hobo –  but I’ll be opening my first bottle of champagne at 10pm…

One thing that bothered me when I voted earlier and is still bothering me now, is the fact that I didn’t need my present my polling card – or indeed any proof that I was who I claimed to be – to vote. I just gave my name and address, they checked I was on some list and crossed me off it, handed me a ballot paper and that was it.

It seems that all this talk of Russian interference in our election is missing the glaringly obvious flaw in the whole voting process, that the greatest threat to the validity of the vote is the ease with which a vote can be obtained. I live in a ‘safe’ seat – inasmuch as any seat can be called safe at this topsy-turvy election – but were I living in a marginal, then a well orchestrated manipulation could skew the result.

Take Richmond Park, where Zac Goldsmith’s majority is only 45, for example. What would happen if a small number of people, who knew this flaw and his tiny majority, got up really early and posed as other people at multiple polling stations to vote against him? And what if that scenario were to be replayed at every marginal seat with a majority of less than 300? Might there then be legal challenge concerning the legitimacy of the election result? Darwin knows Gina Miller isn’t shy of involving the courts.

I’m not suggesting there is any fraud, well perhaps in the case of claims made by Boris’s Johnson about his deal there most certainly is, just that there exists the potential for it to occur.

I’ve just voted some minutes ago and it was with a bizare combination of reluctance and wishing to avoid feeling thoroughly ashamed. Reluctance because my MP has been the MP here since I moved here but is not someone I normally vote for. Thats because I live in a safe Labour seat, her majority being over 18,000 in 2017.

But then I thought what if enough Labour voters believed that as we live in a safe Labour seat they assumed enough Labour voters would vote Labour and didn’t bother to vote, resulting in a Conservative victory. Unlikely, yes, but this election has been dominated by one single issue, the like of which we’ll probably – hopefully – never see again. If it did happen and I’d spoiled my ballot paper as I did in the recent European elections, as a protest about the Supreme Court overturning the legitimate right of the PM, then I’d feel thoroughly ashamed.

Almost as resigned as I am to the fact we’ll never have a proper socialist government, because only fool or a charlatan would assert that any of Tony Blairs terms in office were socialist. Mind you, only a fool would believe it.

However, I’ve just done a massive technicolour yawn! I hope it isn’t my body telling me I shouldn’t have done it nor do I hope that is a bad omen. I did, after all sleep uneasily last night, a sense of foreboding keeping me awake. This is, after all the 12th day, of the 12th month and the full moon last night – the last one this decade – rose at 12.12am .

And tomorrow is Friday 13th, so…..