Is it safe?

There is to be a General Election in the UK in 5 weeks’ time, and it could be the most complicated vote and aftermath in a long time, something that makes my misplaced optimism of 2010 look even more naïve.

It seems likely that no one party will command a majority of seats, just like in 2010. But since 2010 there have been two significant shifts in the electoral landscape, namely the (in my mind, more-than-slightly depressing) rise of UKIP and the astonishing surge away from Labour towards the SNP in Scotland. Add those to the grim slow-death of the Liberal Democrats since their unholy deal with David Cameron’s minority Conservative Government, and you have a mess, where even broadly ideological coalitions will struggle to govern.

See? Simples..!

No points for second place…

I’ve railed before about how my vote has failed to count in 5 out of 6 previous General Elections. In fact, if I’m being all Russell Brand about this, it probably didn’t really matter in the other one either, as the winning party won a massive majority anyway.

When I’ve voted for a ‘losing’ candidate, he (and it has always been a man) has always gained between 29% – 36% of the votes. That’s certainly a long way from winning, but it’s not insignificant. In all of these constituencies and elections, the winning party has barely won an overall majority, and at least a quarter of the electorate (usually more than 1/3) didn’t vote.

The Electoral Reform Group have long campaigned against this system, where so-called safe seats make up almost 60% of the entire House of Commons. But asking MPs and parties who rely on this for most of their power and influence is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Really… Brian May?

And so, in the midst of this confusion and godawful 24/7 reporting that I won’t even go into (remember: just 5 more weeks…), I may have found a most unlikely new political beacon.

Dr Brian May, astronomer, badger-lover, and one of my musical heroes since I was about 8 years old, has launched a new political website and grass-roots campaign. In all honesty, it’s a bit of a mish-mash of his different concerns, but he’s speaking from the heart, and putting some of his money where his mouth is.

I like quite a bit of it, I recognise and connect with its optimism and desire for something better.  I admire its activism. Most of all, he’s (nearly) convinced me that there is a potential to shake the ‘safe seat’ system, even just a little bit.

In all of the safe seats where I’ve voted over the past 28 years, at least 28% of the electorate didn’t vote, which was (usually considerably) more than the entrenched majority at the polls. It’s often the case that people don’t vote because, like me, they’re depressed / annoyed / apathetic at the whole process; either because they knew it wouldn’t affect the result (either as a winner or loser). Well, I Reckon that the more people think and act like that, the more it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My Cotswolds constituency has elected a Conservative (or equivalent) candidate since its creation in 1918. At the last election the sitting MP won a majority of around 20,000 votes. But more than 24,000 people didn’t turn out. Now I don’t think for a moment that those people would all vote the same way, but I’d wager they could make things a bit closer.

Make it count. Make them count you.

I shall be voting for Paul Hodgkinson on 7th May. I’m no fan of the path taken by his party since the last election, but I’m even less of a fan of the Conservatives, and the Labour Party have seen fit to abdicate responsibility for our constituency by selecting a candidate who has never lived in the constituency (and it seems has barely visited it until recently). It’s as if they can’t be bothered, and seems either complacent or patronising at best. I hope and trust that the Labour candidate is a good man, but why should I vote for him on purely party-political lines?

I Reckon we should all vote. Vote tactically if you want to, spoil your ballot if you want to. But the only sure way to ensure your vote even begins to matter, even starts to count just a little bit, is to actually make your vote be counted, by turning up on 7th May and making some kind of mark. It might not change the result – in fact, it probably won’t. But I Reckon our inactivity breeds complacency and apathy among our politicians, and we deserve better.

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A week is a long time in politics…

…and in the UK at the moment, 3 weeks is practically a lifetime. 3 weeks ago I had a bit of a rant at the Labour and Tory parties, but concluded with what I hoped wasn’t naive optimism.

I hope there is a genuine three-way split on May 6th. (Naively?) I hope this forces the main parties into constructive debate and discussion to represent more of the views and desires of the British population. I hope it breaks the complacency and arrogance of the Conservative and Labour Parties to create a more inclusive, less adversarial politics. I hope…

In fact, if you haven’t read that post, it may well be worth going there first, just to see how far things have moved on.

The last month in British politics has engaged me more than the past 5-10 years. Colleagues and friends have been openly and spontaneously, positively chatting about important issues and sharing personal opinions like never before. The TV debates were the catalyst for this, but then so was the chance of real change.

One of the first lectures of my degree (over 20 years ago, sigh) was about trying to define politics. Derived from the Greek polis, meaning a (city) state or body of citizens, a common definition of politics is…

…a process by which groups of people make collective decisions (so says Wikipedia)

To my mind this suggests that decisions are made through discussion and debate, through collaboration and potentially through compromise, so that the will of the entire polis is reflected or at the very least acknowledged.

For my whole lifetime this has not been true of UK politics. Our adversarial, first-past-the-post system does not promote debates where views or policies are modified, but instead a series of monologues where opposing parties simply yell at each other, declaring their own ‘rightness’ and decrying the others’ foolishness. It’s like children playing football, bickering over who gets to be captain. Except it’s bickering over how to run the country. But the party leader with the most friends (MPs) always wins. So when the others (after 5 years or so) finally get a chance, they unsurprisingly overturn half of what has been done before.

While I was studying for my degree, The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a comedy show. One of the most famous of their recurring sketches was History Today, in which two stuffy professors start to discuss weighty matters, before descending into playground banter and name-calling.

And this is what politics has been like, for as long as I can remember. If my children behaved like our politicians, they would sit on the naughty step. If it happened in a classroom, the culprits would be sent out; it’s unacceptable. My marketing clients expect their agencies (who all have their own agendas) to work together to a common goal, sometimes setting aside their own concerns. From an early age we (rightly, IMHO) teach children the benefits of collaboration and cooperation, the qualities of listening and empathy. Yet none of these seem to have been valued in British politics…

…until this week. The right-wing Conservative party won the most votes and seats at the election, but not enough to command a majority. They might not be able to be captain all of the time. So they have formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, in my mind the most progressive and left-leaning of the main UK parties. Right now, barely a couple of days in, they seem extremely serious about this. Never mind that many of their respective party supporters are poles apart on issues like climate change or taxation, the leaders have grabbed the chance to make a difference.

In fact, their early speeches and press conferences feel like they have their long-term Legacy in mind. If they can make this work, they will truly be remembered in UK political history, far more than Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Necessity may well be the mother of invention here, but it feels to me like they are going for it.

Don’t get me wrong, every time I see Michael Gove or George Osborne, my skin crawls a little bit and I shudder.

Gove makes Peter Mandelson look like a kitten. I can only hope he fails his CRB check as Schools Minister on the grounds that he would scare the children. Osborne looks and behaves like a vampire, like he truly despises mortals. He was barely present during the entire election campaign, I can only assume because he doesn’t look good in daylight.

On the other hand, the agreement between the coalition parties is an impressive piece of work, truly a mature and grown-up piece of thinking. I truly hope they can make it work. There have been countless old-guard politicos and journalists all over the media in the last 48 hours behaving as though this is a terrible thing, as though it’s such a leap of faith that mere voters will explode before they can wrap their simple heads around it.

But in fact, it’s a truly simple concept. In order to make things work, to make things better, sometimes it’s best to work together. That might mean you can’t always do everything you want. I get it. My daughters get it. My friends and colleagues get it. But it still appears that many of the dinosaurs in British politics don’t.

I hope it works. I hope Cameron and Clegg lay down the law to their ministers, officials and parties to make it work. It needs to work, to deliver the British economy out of  recession without Thatcherite levels of social division. If it does work, it will transform British politics, in a very good way, to be more inclusive, more mature, more collaborative.

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