Time to wake up and smell the reality coffee
Published: Mon, 11/04/19
And now we have a general election on the 12th of December and British voters are expected to cast a ballot yet again. Who will win? I have no idea. This won’t be a contest between the two traditionally mainstream parties. If anything it will be a four way contest. Those who want to remain in the EU but hope a mainstream party will deliver on that hope, which probably means voting labour. Those who still want the referendum result honored but prefer a mainstream party in power, which I guess means voting Conservative. Those who are very keen to remain and are willing to vote for smaller parties, Liberal Democrats, Greens, or Scottish or Welsh Nationalists in the appropriate regions. Then there are those who believe that voting for the Brexit party is the only way to ensure Brexit gets delivered. Even that assessment doesn’t begin to cover all the reasons that people may, or may not cast their vote. All of which would create a
diverse but, maybe representative, government if the voting system worked by proportional representation. However, the first past the post system which we do rely on in this country is highly unsuited to such fragmented politics.
A great many candidates may well win their seats with slightly more than a quarter of their constituency vote. To put it crudely I will predict that you are going to see a lot of English Constituencies where the Conservatives and the Brexit party split the ‘right wing, leave’ vote. Labour and the Liberal Democrats split the ‘left wing, remain’ vote. I think that the turnout may well be low too in that a lot of people won’t see the point of voting at all. So, you could easily see a lot of MPs taking seats in parliament with as little as 11% of the possible vote in their constituency. It is hard to see that a government formed of MPs with such a tiny share of their local vote can have a real mandate to run the country.
I may be right, I may be wrong, but there is no doubt that the result of this election is highly unpredictable. It is also unlikely that the government which takes power will have convincing a mandate to govern.
I am not giving any advice to UK citizens on voting. All I can say is, who you vote for, or whether you don’t vote at all, will make a difference. So, don’t think you will have no responsibility for the outcome of the election. On the other hand the result is going to be so chaotic that I wouldn’t lose any sleep over your choice.
Don’t get depressed though. Something very useful has come out of the past four years. People are beginning to wake up to the reality that Western Democracy is not working the way we thought it was. I don’t think the systems are broken as such. We won’t help ourselves by replacing our current system with something that looks better but is actually even more deceptive.
The Brexit vote was actually a great success in that a very straightforward experiment in democracy was conducted. A binary vote demanded a specific response and what we have seen since is clear indicator that politicians like to use democracy to control the voters, not the other way around. It does not matter if you are a leaver or a remainer, the message is still clear, at least Jo Swinton, leader of the Liberal Democrats is honest enough to come out and say that if politicians don’t like a democratic vote they can just ignore it. At least you know where you are with this particular lady.
POTUS Donald Trump is doing amazing work in waking up the world too. He has stated that US forces will continue to occupy Syrian territory in order to keep control of the Syrian oil fields. This way America keeps the oil which the legitimate government of that country should be using to rebuild after years of war and devastation. Nothing to do with security, peacemaking or bringing democracy to anyone. Just an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation and the blatant theft of their natural resources. Pure gangsterism but at least the president is being open and honest about it.
If you are just waking up to the mess we are in then it isn’t very pleasant. A lot of us have been seeing these issues for a long time and have got used to this reality. A problem cannot be fixed until it is clear what the problem really is. It is not up to me to tell you what is wrong with government as it is today because everyone has to wake up and see for themselves. The alarm is ringing loudly enough.
regards
Graham
PS I would recommend following this lady for really insightful commentary on today’s world. This article covers a similar theme as my post above https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/11/03/us-needs-to-occupy-syria-because-of-kurds-or-iran-or-chemical-weapons-or-oil-or-whatever/