DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

There's also the question of the extent to which the Greens will benefit from the collapse of the LibDem protest vote.

if that means that all their newsletters have a "Labour/Conservatives Can't Win Here" image at the top then please god no

meant to post about that Lib Dem meme before, says it all really, party of principle and conviction eh?

For all their momentum etc, UKIP have never come close to getting a seat in a general election. They do well in the European elections because British people hate Europe.

xposts to NV hehe, it's righteous but no it's not helpful. especially considering the number of people i talk to online and IRL who hold beliefs and opinions and have standards about their way of life but do not vote because they're scared off by the very idea of politics. when voting time comes, i'm always surprised at how many people say 'well i'm not voting because i don't feel i know enough about politics to vote', and i have to say to them that while they stay at home, there are dozens of right-wing arseholes voting for the BNP and UKIP.

I truly believe that the realm of politics needs to be made accessible to everyone in order for elections to work and for democracy to represent an overall picture of the country rather than the vested interests of an active elite of richer, older voters. It's why, despite certain flaws, I'm very pleased Russel Brand's been putting his oar in because at least he's drawing attention to the subject and bringing them to a wider audience.

I dunno, the LibDems have always been this weird collection of wet Tories, classical Liberals and social democrats who were queasy about Labour's authoritarian instincts, and that did bear out in the opportunism of their campaigning (plus the constant tension between economic and social liberalism) but we shouldn't be in any doubt by now which side has won.

Every party has these faultlines to some extent but it's more pronounced in the LibDems than pretty much any other party, although Labour come close.

The alienated right are consistently better at committing to a minority party, whether it's the BNP or UKIP, and therefore getting attention than the alienated left, whose disillusionment tends to translate into not voting at all and therefore, under the current system, rendering themselves invisible. Occupy was a great attempt to have an impact outside the electoral system though. It stands to reason that a party of the far left or right probably won't get any MPs except in unusual constituencies but they can change the political conversation and nudge the mainstream parties.

it is about trying to appeal to more people by saying 'hey, you don't like the way things are; you're against the major parties and their policies and fibs; these are our policies - you agree with a lot of them, so why not vote for them?. We're not just about fracking and recycling and wearing camo; and we represent a SERIOUS alternative to the status quo, not a fringe party or a protest vote or a waste of time'.

^^^^ 100%. The Green party's lack of engagement with the political process is enraging, given their mostly agreeable policies. I'm not asking for Saatchi & Saatchi, but an acknowledgement that they're a political party and not a pressure group would be helpful. It was the professional campaigning and the move away from the dreadlocks-and-drum-circles image that won the seat at the last electon. (At least that's my understanding - is that right, Brighton posters?)

The alienated right, whether American or British, have no problem getting attention because of their contrariness/racism/authoritarian love for staying on-message with a few simple ideas.

I would suggest that the right's willingness to turn disallusion into votes, and the left's reluctance to do the same, is a negative rather than a positive. It may or may not be tru that the current system cannot bring meaningful change (I believe it can, given it has in the past) but until a left-leaning party gives it a proper go in the 21c we'll never find out.

The alienated right have no problem voting because every major party in this country espouses views they're mostly comfortable with

It may or may not be tru that the current system cannot bring meaningful change (I believe it can, given it has in the past)

i think the Labour government of 1945 has to be viewed as an historical anomaly brought about by a set of circumstances which will never cohere again. that's before i even think about whether said government did anything to arrest or ameliorate the advancement of capitalism and its ongoing destruction of human potential

i know i get apocalyptic when it's better to be pragmatic but i think a lot of "pragmatists" shd take a long hard think about how little improvement in the way our society works has been bought at the expense of how much continued diversion of the world's natural and human resources into the hands of a very privileged micro-minority, and look at the direction the gap continues to move in, and wonder whether they aren't being just a tiny bit played

I like the idea of ballot spoiling rather than not turning up at the polling station at all, but I think that any movement that promotes it should not just say 'spoil your paper' so that people simply write obscenities or scribble over the paper randomly. Rather, the movement should encourage people to write the message NONE OF THE ABOVE, neatly and simply. That way, the participants are making clear that they do want to participate in the political process, it is simply that they do not believe that any of the candidates will act in their interests.

If the movement became successful, just in one constituency...hell, even one ward in a local election, and the number of NONE OF THE ABOVE papers exceeded the number of votes for the most successful candidate then that would make people sit up and take notice. And I don't think the 'winning' candidate could be said to have a mandate.

^^^ this, basically

They'd only sit up and take notice if it looked likely that those who spoiled their papers could be organised into voting consistently. If it just looked like inchoate dissatisfaction then widespread spoiling would offer no meaningful threat, or even nudge.

it's not so much a threat i think as at least not handing the stick to the cunt that's beating you

I guess ultimately I don't believe that either (a) the major parties in the UK are functionally identical or (b) a mass campaign of spoiling would lead to fundamental system change.

You know, I was all ready to go with the Greens in the next election. Then I read this. And that was the end of that.

(I also don't get too het up about the sanctity of my vote legitimising people I don't believe in wholeheartedly, if one is slightly better than the other then that's worth my little x in the little box, I reckon.)

Unfortunately nobody sits and logs the reasons the ballot is spoiled. There's no practical difference between a paper with "none of the above" and one where you have voted for two candidates, afaik.

Unfortunately nobody sits and logs the reasons the ballot is spoiled. There's no practical difference between a paper with "none of the above" and one where you have voted for two candidates, afaik.

Nobody does *yet*, ShariVari. If large numbers of people could be mobilized into spoiling their papers blatantly *in the same way* they may well change their minds.

Regarding the Greens, anti immigration bandwagon jumping aside, just as the LibDem party has been stymied by the fact that it is (a) a grab bag for people who don't like the Tories and Labour, and (b) the result of a coalition between old Liberals and refugees from the Labour Party and thus pretty split in its ideology (such as it has), I think the Greens are scuppered by not being scientific enough. If you are going to be a party that promotes sustainability and the prevention of ecological destruction then you *have* to be 100% scientific in your thinking to have any credibility at all. Otherwise, when you oppose Arctic drilling, or fracking, and give your reasoning for doing so, the energ execs can turn around and say "why should we trust anything you say when you have people in your ranks who believe in homeopathy and crystal power" and your credibility as a political force is pretty much done for.

I'd even say this is true when it comes to Green objections to nuclear. Remind them only ~100 people died as a direct result of Chernobyl, or that Three Mile Island killed no-one and emitted radiation equivalent to giving everyone in NYC one chest X-ray. They really won't like it.

large swathes of spoiled ballots/no votes would at some point be unprecedented and noteworthy, this cd potentially be about gauging the level of anger and disaffection as opposed to brute apathy

You know, I was all ready to go with the Greens in the next election. Then I read this. And that was the end of that.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Friday, November 8, 2013 1:26 PM (5 minutes ago)

you were swayed by a few party members who disagree with the party policy??

If there were better political parties, better candidates, better ideas, people would be moved to go out and vote - look at the USA elections earlier this week.

But no, here in Britain it's just the same old faces, the same school debating society "adversarial" approach to everything that might have worked in the court of King Wolfnut 1200 years ago but not now, the Aldi/Lidl/Tesco "choices" of political parties, none of whom gives a damn about anybody except the 10% of floating voters, all of whom talk the same uninformed crap about immigration and benefits. And nobody - i.e. the people who need to be "won over" to politics - gives enough of a toss even to consider spoiling the ballot paper.

I read the riposte but it doesn't convince me - these people are still members, they have input and presumably influence on how policies are shaped - that the party would offer anything different if in power.

as a fellow Jeremiah i broadly agree with you Marcello but it's a bleak way to live no? and i worry myself that its functionally equivalent to apathy in many ways. but on the other hand we're still talking about the Westminster Mausoleum and politics can and does take place outside of there in lots of useful ways

I wholeheartedly agree. But I think that unfortunately a lot of people stick by political parties the way they support football teams or only read specific newspapers – next time the majority of voters would, I suspect, be the sort who say to themselves: “Well, I’d better vote Conservative because I’ve ALWAYS voted Conservative and I always WILL vote Conservative…” The problem is how to break that circle and show people what the alternatives are without putting them off.

these people are still members, they have input and presumably influence on how policies are shaped

So wait, three Green members disagree with the leadership and say something you don't like, dozens respond to back the leadership and you still give up on the party because of the three? No wonder you can't find anyone to vote for.

The alienated right have no problem voting because every major party in this country espouses views they're mostly comfortable with

i.e. they're not very alienated

If these three have no influence, why was their letter prominently published in the Guardian?

cos it's a good story?

Well, I didn't like to say...

Ultimately I think that spoiling a ballot paper only plays into the hands of the people with a vested interest in keeping things the same. Even a critical mass of spoilt ballot papers would delegitimise all main parties more or less equally, and therefore under our electoral system not at all.

The problem we have is that membership of political parties is *tiny* and it's this tiny minority of people that effectively get to choose one of two people who might be Prime Minister. Labour is slightly better with the union vote but it's still a long way from genuine mass engagement. Also there are a hell of a lot of complacent people within the Labour Party who still exist under the delusion that another Tony Blair is what the country needs and we can rewind to 2004 when everything was great, and don't have any interest in changing their party.

A significant groundswell of left-leaning people, in the right places, who could say "we will vote for you if you pledge to do this" would change things far more than spoiling a ballot paper. Until then, we'll get the same policies aimed at appeasing the same tiny minority of people in swing seats who ultimately decide elections.

Labour has pretty much set itself up to prevent a groundswell of left-leaning people gaining influence, tbf

but if you're talking about extra-party pressure groups then it may be a viable strategy, yeah. there's a lot of entrenchment tho. and even threads give me the impression that plenty of people think things are broadly ok and just need a bit of tweaking into a kindlier direction

"threads like this" i mean

i dunno, the fundamental division between whether you think market capitalism is a tractable workhorse or the express train to end times i guess, or which end of that spectrum you lean closer towards

The point I'm making is that we won't get better political leaders, even within the main parties, until we put pressure on those parties to do so. Assuming the whole system isn't going to be torn down any time soon, which I think is a fair assumption.

Like I don't rate Miliband particularly highly but he does have some ideas about changing the relationship between the state and markets that would have horrified Labour high command ten years ago.

Labour's fear of being seen as even slightly left-wing is partly down to right-wing entryism but also down to terror of being savaged by a press that is declining in relevance and influence. I get the sense that no one even believed that left wing (or even "left wing") populism was even possible, and that might be changing, but it won't change further without significant changes on the ground, outside all the main parties.

And yes I am specifically talking about pressure on political parties from people OUTSIDE those parties.

what sort of thing do you mean by changes on the ground outside of the main parties? minority party support? changes in "public attitudes"? more focused-interest campaigns?

i think broadly you're right about this being the only plausible means of effecting change in the short to medium btw

Very good and I think largely OTM piece by Zoe W in the Guardian a couple of days ago: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/06/mps-may-regret-bid-to-neuter-charities

If there were better political parties, better candidates, better ideas, people would be moved to go out and vote - look at the USA elections earlier this week.

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/11/christie-buono_race_draws_record_low_turnout_for_nj_governors_election.html
http://www.nytimes.com/news/election-2013/2013/11/06/new-york-turnout-appears-headed-for-record-low/

suddently it occurs to me that one of the tactics for influencing the main parties might be at least the threat of withdrawal of votes?

A combination of changing public attitudes and focussed-interest campaigns that can successfully harness them. Not an economic issue but I think the changing political consensus around gay rights over the last 25 years or so is one example of how this can happen.

I've said before that most people still don't really grasp the extent to which neoliberalism has failed, because the bail-out of the banks insulated the people from the pain. Or at least it insulated them from a very sudden sharp pain that would have affected virtually everyone, as opposed to the long drawn-out pain some of the country is now experiencing. But outside of that is a still very large (ie election-winning) group of people who DO think that things are still okay and a tweak in one direction or another is pretty much all the country needs. I tell Labour-voting people that the way much of the Western world has done business over 30 years has been proven not to work and I get blank looks.

Aside from that is a group of (primarily) young people who know things are not okay because even the educated ones from wealthy backgrounds can't see a way ahead under the current system - and that's the constituency that Russell Brand has successfully given voice to, and the constituency that will need to grow for any meaningful change to be possible.

http://www.channel4.com/news/russell-brand-jeremy-paxman-anti-capitalist-revolution-bbc

^^^ This, basically. Any 'revolution' that does happen is unlikely to be socialist in nature but it will be something different.

Then there's the issue of even 'successful' revolutions being followed with the re-assertion of the power of a reconfigured state.

there is a lot of language, like "revolution", that feels calcified beyond use today. but it's awkward to continually come up with circumlocutions when you want to talk about fundamental changes to social structures

it's hard to organize mass action behind ums and aahs and the complexities of how the world is. on the other hand, idiot sloganeering embeds lies before the slogans have even finished. how to persuade enough people that ideas can cripple or liberate them and their children and so on is a massive challenge.

maybe reinvigorated Occupy-esque movements that seek to engage a broader mass of people (possibly by making different tactical decisions in some instances re: oppositional gestures) are possible