As anyone who follows me will be acutely aware, I’ve been tweeting a lot about tomorrow’s general election in the UK. But I’m not the only one: this election has certainly got people talking and broken a lot of ground in so many ways. I’m hardly qualified to make comparisons to the past, having only experienced a few elections in my years, but it seems there hasn’t been this level of excitement or engagement with the political process for a very long time. All this considered, I thought it’d be a shame not to jot down some thoughts for prosperity right before what could be a rather historic day.
The Leaders’ Debates have been extraordinary. To get them to talk solely on policies for 90 minutes at a time, and for people to actually watch, in their millions, is a revelation, and now the main question turns to why we’ve only just realised they were a good idea, whilst the US has been doing them for as long as they can remember. We haven’t quite got the hang of it yet though: first of all, they were often stilted, due to their restrictive structure (this was especially true of the first, and Alastair Stewart’s relentless barking of surnames made the whole thing quite surreal). Second, I think this desire of the media’s to designate a single winner for each debate (apparently Clegg in the first and Cameron in the second and third) is just silly; to assign an objective and absolute winner of such debates — especially ones containing so little actual person-to-person debate — is futile and surely only really reflects pre-existing allegiances. Clegg’s victory in the first debate doesn’t adhere to this assertion of course, but that was only because the shock of him actually being a credible politician from a credible party merely shocked everyone into submission. The third, and more obvious flaw is the emphasised focus on the leader himself that this format creates. Debates featuring other members of the potential cabinets would have been nice, but admittedly, far less interesting (for evidence, look no further than the almost ignored Chancellors’ Debate). Really, I think we all secretly lust after having a president…or more to the point, our very own little Obama.
The hung parliament talk has been blown out all proportion and then out of any sort of remaining proportion. Like, if it was originally a square, it’s now a mobius strip or something. It doesn’t help that the term “majority” is misleading; I worry how many people hear the explanation and think it means all parties will have around the same number of MPs, which would admittedly yield pandemonium. I don’t necessarily think having a hung parliament is a good thing per sé, but if it is the outcome of the nation being indecisive about who should lead this country, then it is the right one, at least until a better solution is found down the line. Unfortunately not everyone sees it this way, and the way the concept has been used and abused by the Tories, amongst others, is just something else, leading on to the fact that…
Surely the second most remarkable aspect of this election has been the unending talk of tactical voting. It must be the mark of a flawed voting system that it has proliferated so heavily, and I would hope it represents first past the post’s death knell. Between the Tories’ absurd and beguiling warnings against voting for the ‘Hung Parliament Party’ (as if they’re the only ones who can see that that’s what a vote for Labour or the Liberal Democrats self-evidently is), Ed Balls astonishing subtext that voters in Tory-Lib Dem marginal seats should vote for the Liberal Democrats and a worringly dubious yet popular website telling you exactly how to vote for a hung parliament, I honestly think all this talk is in a profoundly undemocratic spirit, and, all the time we have a FPTP system, it’s only going to be poisonous to how people think of their vote.
The Liberal Democrats pretty much got everything they could have out of this election after the first debate; there wasn’t a great need to go on after that. Instead of being mocked or dismissed as they have been for as long as I can remember, after that unprecedented surge in the polls they suddenly became taken very seriously indeed, even by Have I Got News For You. The Tory-supporting media suddenly picked up shit and threw shit as hard and as fast as they never bothered to in the past, but, thankfully for democracy as a whole, most of it missed. The surge in the opinion polls isn’t the point though; under the very system they oppose, even achieving a popular vote of their post-first debate opinion poll high wouldn’t give them many more seats than they have had in the past. With the opinion polls as they are, they’re probably going to get a similar amount of seats to the last five years. Instead, what matters is that sudden surge of credibility, which is all they could realistically hoped for. It’s not hard to foresee the real benefits being reaped in future elections: expect Lib Dem votes to increase over the years and if we were ever lucky enough to take a turn towards proportional representation, they could be a real party to lead the country. In the long run, having a true three-party system can only be good for everyone.
One of the most astute points made about the economy was actually made by Gordon Brown; that Cameron’s plans to reduce the deficit immediately were for “purely ideological” reasons. It applies to him too though; although I recently argued in favour of Brown and Clegg’s plans to delay cuts, it’s somewhere between incredibly difficult and impossible for anyone to weigh up the risks associated with making cuts now (jeopardising the recovery) or in the future (a burgeoning national debt), be it professional economists, let alone politicians, laymen or, least of all, myself. Because of this, any opinion on what to do is inherently based on ideology and predisposition: Brown doesn’t really know that making cuts tomorrow would begin a spiral into his imfamous “double dip”, and similarly Cameron doesn’t really know that the future risks of not cutting tomorrow, in terms of Britain’s place in international finance markets, would be too great. It all depends on your underlying ideological view on the size and role of the state, as did my assertion, and as will the opinion of the voters, tomorrow.
By and large, the focus has been on the right policies, although there have been some noticeable absences. It’s staggering how quickly people have stopped talking about the expenses scandal (or Expensesgate, as I’m not going to call it — as American comedian Jon Stewart put it, “you can’t add ‘gate’ to the end of a scandal! That’s our abuse of power, that’s not yours!”). Perhaps the MPs involved were right to be complacent about it after all; this adds to a lot of evidence of the shortness of our political memory, especially under the excitement of an election. Avoided, too, were higher education funding (much to the chagrin of Students Unions up and down the country) and the environment (perhaps not surprising given the focus on the economy; expect the Green Party to do comparatively well because of this, although it’ll only induce the Green vote from those who would consider giving it anyway). I too would have liked to hear more about the Digital Economy Bill, although the entire spirit of that Act seems to be for as few people as possible to hear about it. Incidentally, I think Nick Clegg provided absolutely the right response to it.
I was initially quite surprised that full-time elephant in the room Gordon Brown wasn’t replaced to allow someone else to lead the Labour Party in this election, but then I suppose he had very little to lose in the last month, and maybe all to gain. You see, when someone becomes quite that unpopular, the only way is up; no double-dip for him! Who knows, maybe his gaffes will have started to turn around and actually get people back on his side, like a bumbling but well intentioned uncle. I can almost hear the empathy: support the underdog! He’s only human! He means well! So what, he makes mistakes! Yeah, she was a bit of a bigot! But then, perhaps most people don’t think like I do. On a more serious note, though, when he’s at his best he can be far, far better than critics ever give him credit for.
What was supposed to be the election of the new media has turned out to be anything but. The debates, held on good old television, have been the driving force, leaving social media such as Twitter by the wayside. This is interesting as it reminds us of the need to challenge the assumption that new technologies will automatically change and revolutionise things like politics over time, when sometimes all we really need to do is look back at how older technologies can be used more effectively to even greater an effect.
There you go, just a few thoughts that have struck me over the last few weeks. May the best man — oops, I mean party — win.