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

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?

Who?

Kinnock took an important stand to prevent people who didn't share the core values of the Labour party from infiltrating the organization and reshaping it in their god dammit

hah

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

That's simply not true: the increasing number of people who don't vote has been very widely reported whereas spoilt ballots are hardly ever discussed.

the number of people who don't vote is almost always reported in terms of apathy, spoiled ballots cd prevent that reading

cd t? wd t?

Spoiled Ballots CD: “Prevent That Reading.” Available now at Rough Trade. “Gervais Town Fury At Punk Slight”

Spoiled Ballots: 'None of the Above'
Civic Dissent: 'Crude Sketch of a Spunky Penis'
The Disillusioned: 'Stay at Home'

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

This seems like a fair point, to me.

also sending a message that people are dissatisfied with the way things are as opposed to very much indifferent

This less so - if the message is "we are dissatisfied but we are dissatisfied in all our different individual ways", that doesn't give anyone a clue about where to go. Anger is an energy and all that but there needs ot be more than "none of you are good enough". I think the political class are painfully aware of dissatisfaction, I don't think they know what to do about it.

ah, they're incompetent rather than uninterested

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

getting them up off their arses to vote would be a much more useful power to wield, don't you think? if you've magically inspired them that far, like?

xpost
They're likely both, but I reckon a politician would be very pleased to work out a way of tapping into / mobilising a mass of disenchanted / disengaged current non-voters.

the main political parties and their patrons do what they want thanks largely to dissatisfaction and its anomic futile expression

just at the level of pure content, it would be interesting to see what nick clegg or his successor would say if exit polls showed that more 18-25 year olds deliberately spoilt their ballots than voted for the liberal democrats, which isn't entirely unfeasible if this become a social media thing, perchance even a bantz thing

getting them up off their arses to vote would be a much more useful power to wield, don't you think? if you've magically inspired them that far, like?

― midwife christless (darraghmac), Friday, November 8, 2013 4:29 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm dismayed that so many under 25y/os don't vote. There are loads of excuses: "They're all the same", "I don't like any of the parties", "I don't understand politics enough to vote", "Russell Brand told me not to vote", "I can't be fucked" etc. You can't do much about the "can't be fucked" contingent, granted, but the rest have no excuse. Even if they don't feel they ought to vote for a party, they should be encouraged to register that fact IMO.

and i can see social media being the catalysing factor for that - it's why some friends and i started a facebook page to encourage people to do it after the Brand debacle. at the moment it's mostly only people from our local area, but considering we've had nothing but that cockwipe Peter Lilley representing us for years (largely due to our constituency being shared with Harpenden, which is a good bus ride away as well as a bunch of villages and farmland), i can only hope it at least encourages a few more people to go and use their vote.

FWIW, even though we're actively encouraging vote spoiling, we also advocate voting for your chosen candidate over staying at home.

It's not an excuse. It's a belief. Under-25s see Boring Politics steal their future away from them and perceive that whoever they vote for, if they vote, are going to fuck them over if they get into power.

The old games won't work anymore and society needs to find a new way to live and function because people know that the Government - ANY Government - isn't going to do anything for them.

facht

It's not an excuse. It's a belief. Under-25s see Boring Politics steal their future away from them and perceive that whoever they vote for, if they vote, are going to fuck them over if they get into power.

The old games won't work anymore and society needs to find a new way to live and function because people know that the Government - ANY Government - isn't going to do anything for them.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Friday, November 8, 2013 4:45 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think whether it's an excuse or a belief is down to the individual. A lot of people hadn't even considered the notion of a corrupt/moribund political system until a famous comedian went on Paxman and started spouting off about. The real trouble was, he told them that doing NOTHING about it was the solution. Great, because that's what they were doing all along.

What is your desired result, DL? Let's say that somehow 10% of the electorate could be persuaded to spoil their papers by writing 'none of the above' on them. What next?

harpenden is seized, all kulaks deported to radlett for internment and forcible re-education

the govt of the day cede power to the organisers of the fb group responsible

To be very honest, we're not sure of a desired result or outcome. I'm not even sure we're necessarily interested in one either. As I say, it's less about overnight miracles and more about incremental changes in attitude as well as standing up and being counted.
What I want is for people who currently aren't voting to at least become actively participant in the political and democratic process, whether that means voting for the first time or showing that one is actively opposed to it. A lot of people don't realise that ballot spoiling is an option, so a lot of it is about raising awareness, activating people, getting them to think about how their lives are being affected by politics in the hope it becomes a lifelong habit. It's also about raising awareness when it comes to dissent. I think there are a lot of people out there who are disgusted with the current parties and the political status quo, but there's no way of measuring that if people stay at home. In the unlikely situation that every disenchanted person went out and registered their ballot as spoilt, it would be a first step towards doing something about it.

A lot of people hadn't even considered the notion of a corrupt/moribund political system until a famous comedian went on Paxman and started spouting off about.

Now I am depressed

To Tom D.: Are you surprised though? Not everyone, especially not younger people, are interested in the news. They hear the words 'politics' or 'current affairs' and immediately change channel. It's men in suits talking waffle for the most part and what has that got to do with the average 18 year old? Young people didn't vote in the last election because they were against the political system, they didn't vote because for the most part they weren't interested or didn't even know why they should. From what I remember, democracy was never explained to us in school. We weren't taught the difference between the various political beliefs or how parliament is organised or what first past the post means or even what happens when we vote. I had to learn all this for myself and really didn't feel like I had a grasp on such facts till i was past 25.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is good reason for this. If kids were taught about the very basics of our political infrastructure we would have a very different political climate on our hands.

I am surprised that so many people would take notice of what Russell Brand might be saying tbh.

Not everyone, especially not younger people, are interested in the news. They hear the words 'politics' or 'current affairs' and immediately change channel. It's men in suits talking waffle for the most part and what has that got to do with the average 18 year old?

It's always been like that though, hasn't it?