So who do we vote for when the good times are over and won’t ever come back?
Most of us don’t have party political allegiances. The shadows cast by the worst decisions of previous and current Prime Ministers tend to inform our decisions at the ballot box, and because some pretty appalling policies have been inflicted on us down the years by both Labour and the Conservatives, we spend a lot of our time at a crossroads of opinion subject to movement caused by the vagaries of the media as much as by our own experiences and anything the latest leaders do or say.
The Liberal Democrats tend to mop up some of the disaffected and discontented, although they’ve supported the current government so many times we’d be forgiven for thinking they’re an even paler shade of red than the New Labour project that saw socialism’s core values excised under Tony Blair. The unbridled global free market has led to or exasperated global problems—the credit crunch, the food crisis, runaway global warming—but right now Gordon Brown is getting in the neck as the grand bogeyman presiding over our imminent leap into recession or even a second great depression. But to be fair, while we can blame Brown’s party for many things—erosion of our civil liberties, unquestioning support of George Bush, the decision to attack and occupy Iraq—we can’t blame them for everything.
But the ways in which countries and international institutions interact are complex, and lost on voters looking for someone to blame for the price of bread and butter, and the unavailability or high cost of mortgages. The most important thing of all—maintaining our personal freedoms—matters to an alarmingly small number of people. For those of us who do care, we’re now at a stage where we simply cannot vote Labour. The party has done some good things. But it seeks not to engage us all in a shared vision of how society should be, but to coerce us by force if necessary. It has become the party of the Borg, or the Cybermen: you will comply, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated or you will be deleted. There is no heart, just a calculating machine.
The Conservatives appear to have a leader in David Cameron who, like Blair, is out to change public perceptions of his party but who, unlike Blair, is trying to move his party from the right-wing to the centre ground. Blair pretended to be moving from the left-wing to the centre but in reality moved much further rightwards. If Cameron is truly trying to curb the aristocratic and out-there old guard in his party, great—but many of us fear he might be saying something entirely different behind closed doors. Something along the lines of “yes, I know, of course we will do that, but we have to get elected first”. How can we know he’s not dealing with his own lunatics by promising them jam tomorrow instead of telling them their views are too extreme, their choice to stay and change or bugger of to another more extreme party? We can’t know, can we? We either trust or we don’t, and trust is thin on the ground.
But trust is, unlike so many things, a renewable resource if—and only if—the right words are said, and accompanied by the right actions.
It would help if the Conservatives had a clearer game plan, but there are precious few policies to scrutinise right now. We’ve had some talk about financial help for the institution of heterosexual marriage in preference to same-sex unions and unmarried heterosexual couples that had me remembering the good old bad days of inequality and oppression under Thatcher and Major, so I readily admit I fear the Tories gaining national power ever again.
I am somewhat consoled by the younger generation of Tories, however, many of whom—take a look here–appear not only intelligent but fundamentally decent people, far more aware of the importance of building and maintaining social justice and opportunities for all than the old school Tories ever were. Many seem to have genuinely rejected the notion of their party being there to sustain the rich and keep the poor downtrodden. Labour seems to have taken on that particular warped responsibility, the gap between rich and poor now bigger than ever before and continuing to widen.
If the Conservatives are evolving, then we owe it to ourselves to listen to what they have to say today rather than judge the new wave on the ‘crimes’ of the old who are, it has to be said, getting very old now. But the progressives need to be more visible to the rest of us, and they need to persuade Cameron to ditch policies which would reward one lifestyle choice over others and to say, unequivocally, his party is not going to reward the rich and penalise the poor, and show us policy intentions to prove this. Am I saying it is time to forgive Thatcher? No. I don’t think, sadly, I could ever forgive her. But she is an old, old woman now and to simply oppose the Tories on the basis of what they did in power 1979-1997 is not being fair to their new blood, or to ourselves.
For most of us who would like to use our votes, and haven’t abandoned the democratic process altogether, the dilemma today is at least as nightmarish as it was back in 1997 when everyone, it seemed, wanted the Tories out and was willing to vote for New Labour even though Blair appeared then, as he always did, to be a bad news proposition. Better the devil you don’t know, that was the mantra. And we’ve paid a heavy price, and continue to do so: the latest plan to record the details of every phone call and email is simply terrifying. We must eject these Orwellian power-freaks. It seems the only way to do this is to vote Conservative. I still can’t do it, but it is to be hoped that Cameron is not going to be content to ride to power just on the back of anti-government feeling, that he will in fact aim to secure positive votes for his party based on people actually liking what his party stands for, what he plans to do in power.
But he might just do what Blair did. Power is power, after all, irrespective of how you get it. But that would mark the man as merely opportunistic, and I have this nagging feeling he might, at least sometimes, be genuine.
So who do we vote for? All too often we know who we won’t vote for. But does every election now have to be an act of punishment by the electorate, rather than an enthusiastic advocacy of change? I vote Green in local elections, have done for a while; I like the obvious priority they give to the environment, but that’s as far as it goes. I don’t like the rigid ‘one dogma for all’ framework by which that party is organised, which is cliquey and restrictive. I don’t yet know who I will vote for in the next General Election. Whoever gets my vote, I’d like it to be cast in favour of, not as an act of spite as was so evident across the country in the recent local elections. But, that said, it won’t be cast for New Labour. Contrary to many, I actually don’t dislike Brown; he’s dour, sure, but he’s a clever and mostly competent man presiding over a mess left behind at just the right time by his predecessor, and only now maturing into monstrous fruit.
I believe the erosion of our civil liberties must be stopped along with the database state, and green taxes favouring the rich and punishing the poor. In essence I am a libertarian. Perhaps there can be no party for me, which I’ve always considered to be a waste as I’m a political activist without a home. Maybe I don’t need one and shouldn’t seek one out, not ever. But yes, I would like, if it is true that the Conservatives will win power next time, to not feel so damned fearful of that prospect as a gay man, primarily, but also as someone mindful of his working class origins and vulnerable status as a person suffering from an unseen disability sick to death of how politicians of all persuasions see those on disability benefits as suitable targets for criticism and cuts. So, Mr Cameron and Company: reassure me. Please. I’m waiting to be convinced. If you can persuade those on the left to give you a chance, you’ve cracked the oft-talked-about ‘mould of British politics’. Maybe.
Whoever wins the next General Election will face a prolonged and likely indefinite period of unprecedented domestic and international crisis as the planet heats up, over a third of all life on earth heads towards extinction, the toxicity in our oceans reaches critical mass, and the fossil fuels upon which we are entirely reliant run out. The good times of the last 15 or so years will never return. Not ever. Accept this, and move forward with your happy memories of unsustainable but highly enjoyable consumption without consequences.
Sustainability and a zero carbon economy must be the priorities, and it best serves all of us not to have our politicians arguing over points of social justice, what constitutes fairness. They need to agree, to support the vulnerable, to take money from the rich to help the poor and the planet, to avoid using queer and unemployed and Muslim bogeymen to point-score. They need to focus. We all do. Even the most frugal lifestyle imaginable, near-Stone Age in impact, scores just over one Earth. It’s depressing, yes? We currently consume in the UK alone at a rate that is equivalent to the resources of at least seven Earths. It can’t continue, and won’t. Better to work now to change our ways than have to respond to crisis when it is upon us.
But for most people, this message seems ‘out there’, unduly alarmist. The ’surely not’ mentality prevents us from accepting that our civilisation, our species, could go the way of all those before it. That, and people want their plastics, their petrol, their Big Macs. Will any political leader engage with the brutal realities when the electorate is so keen to see everything in the short-term? Our future is in our own hands, yes, absolutely—but it is also in the hands of whoever we vote into power.
Think on that a while.
tags: Big Brother, civil liberties, Conservatives, database state, David Cameron, elections, environment, food crisis, free market, global warming, Gordon Brown, ID cards, Labour, Liberal Democrats, politics, sustainability, Tony Blair
2 comments on “So who do we vote for when the good times are over and won’t ever come back?”
May 20th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Well, I don’t know who I would vote for, they all seem as bad as each other to be honest. Last time I voted for the Lib Dem’s, but to be fair I am not ‘up’ on any of the parties policies nowadays as we avoid watching the news for Scott’s sanity. I have never been a fan of the Green Party. Their hearts in the right place, but I do find they take things too far, yes we need to think of the planet but I can’t support a party who sole aim seems to be that and forget about the problems faced by people living in this country which the Green Party has always struck me as doing. There needs to be a happy medium, and for me no party seems to provide that.
In mum and dads car the other day I was listening to part of a Radio 2 debate about the oil under the woodland, and someone phoned in to say we don’t need the trees, as britain is covered with them, and the oil will bring in much needed money, and people who care about the environment should stop to think about how their standard of living would change if we didn’t dig up that oil. Bah, bullshit, even my old fashioned dad said as much. In other words the guy phoning in was a middleclass city dweller who drives a 4×4 and thinks its his god given right to do so. Its like the people who complain about windfarms being ugly (though personally I find them quite pretty), I really wish people would stop thinking about silly things like how they look and think about the bigger picture. Its all very well having a nice view from your window, but unless we do something soon that nice view may chnage in the future because the planets messed up.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I think avoiding the news is good for everyone’s sanity.
Your view on the Greens is pretty much the same as mine, but they serve to bring environmental issues to our notice and the political table.
The inability to see long-term, and the big picture, is what I’ve taken to calling the Dodo Factor. x
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