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

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

And I don't think the 'winning' candidate could be said to have a mandate.

this is the problem (re a majority filling in 'none of the above'). there'll still be a result, you haven't had any input into that result, the appointed MP/Councillor/whoever will continue to act in precisely the same way they would have done in office as if you'd not bothered.

imo you can only vote for the person locally as close to the direction you want things to go as you can get. next election, check did they act accordingly and set expectations against the other candidates. then do it again. and again. can't think of a more glamorous, quicker or maore guaranteed way of effecting change through ballot box.

outside movements/focus groups can be a useful tool for reframing contexts and debates/attitudes around specific issues, but imo it won't change methods of govt or eg the mindset of a cabinet towards financial planning or business- any such group (think occupy) gaining a groundswell of enough intensity and potential (and occupy was fewer than once-a-generation in the opportunity presented, maybe) is highly unlikely to be able to form coherent workable policy or even broad strokes that an electorate will find palatable (not, tbf, that govt does either, but it's in place and formalised and people find comfort in that even as the system heads towards the precipice).

this is the problem (re a majority filling in 'none of the above'). there'll still be a result, you haven't had any input into that result, the appointed MP/Councillor/whoever will continue to act in precisely the same way they would have done in office as if you'd not bothered.

the problem is, so many people out there don't vote at all. spoiling a ballot won't have an immediate effect, but if somehow those non-voters came out and spoilt their ballots, it would be noted and reported and it would be registered as dissent, not apathy or indifference. Low turn-outs often get read as people being sedated, happy with their lot and the status quo. Spoilt ballots can't be read in the same way.

agreed that it can't be spun the same way, i don't agree that it follows that anything necessarily changes from that point though

i agree with darragh that the machinery of government will run on even if nobody oils it, but i'd argue that it's easier for politicians to spin a vote, no matter how grudging or targeted or pragmatic, as "support", than it is to spin no vote at all

Spoiled ballots wouldn't make the organisers or the parties act any differently. "Registered as dissent," filed away, forgotten about, shredded.

Yeah Blair's massive majority in 2001 was actually representative of a fairly small proportion of the electorate, but no one in the Labour Party cared.

easily imagined that a shrug, 'if they couldn't even be bothered to vote, well...?', it all goes away, basically

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.

I doubt it - where would the pressure come from for 'none of the above' to be counted differently?

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.

― Ramnaresh Samhain (ShariVari), Friday, 8 November 2013 13:28 (1 hour ago)

this rather misses the point that there is a statistically stable residual percentage of people who mistakenly invalidate their ballot papers but if 5% of the electorate did so, it would be very clearly deliberate

And then what would the powers that be do? Bleed all over them?

yeah well it's clearly not going to DO ANYTHING in some grand carlinio-maoist sense but there's no suggestion every person deliberately submitting a spoilt ballots wants or is trying to achieve that

What would they do it for then?

Like they care, as long as they're first past the post.

(We're all in it together)

just let's be thankful that there are cool old british people on the internet reminding them that tiny incremental gesture of civic disatisfaction aren't going to lead to an anarchosyndicalist utopia

just let's be thankful that there are cool old british people on the internet reminding them that tiny incremental gesture of civic disatisfaction aren't going to lead to an anarchosyndicalist utopia

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Friday, November 8, 2013 3:45 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM, it's not about affecting an immediate world-beating change in the political mindset. Nothing short of a dictatorship or militant takeover will ever do that, so talking as though that is what's needed is unrealistic, even if a complete overhaul is desired. By encouraging (especially young) non-voters to at least register their dissent, it is doing two things: Making them get off their arses and going to the polling booths, and by extension motivating them to take their first step towards becoming politically active; and also sending a message that people are dissatisfied with the way things are as opposed to very much indifferent. Political parties might not take much notice or change their policies based on this, but spoilt ballots are counted. They become a statistic which is undeniable when printed in the press. Non-votes aren't reported and are never considered when reporting on elections. It's a tiny incremental gesture as Nilmar says, but it's a first step and it's a shit ton better than nothing at all.

“militant takeover” – didn’t Kinnock stop that in the eighties?