THE AGE OF ALIENATION
I.
We walked out toward the river terrace following in the footsteps of Denis Skinner, incongruous in trainers, who made his way to sit, on seats overlooking the river Thames, with Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror. It was all beginning to feel woozily surreal.
Two days later The State Opening of Parliament took
place, the dead weight of history made visible. An anachronistic mix of fancy
dress parade and pantomime ritual; tiaras, ermine and the delivery of a robotic
speech written by robotic minds.
This is piffle, the real message of the electorate was that that for the most part they didn’t give a toss. Turnout in the UK was 33.8%, down slightly on last time people voted in this polls. This has been the story of voter turnout since the peak turnouts in the years immediately following the second World War, the highest being 83.9% in 1950, this compares to the last general election with a turnout of 65.1%.[2] It is also worth noting that general election turnouts are much higher than other elections, the turnout for the new posts of Police and Crime Commissioners reached an all-time low of just over 18%.
The situation is even worse when it comes to voter registration, over the last few years six million people have disappeared off the electoral register. Whilst we do not have anything so crude as the grotesque phenomenon of ‘voter suppression,’ as practised in the US by the Republican Party, the vote in this country is also being suppressed, in the case of the UK by a process that can be characterised as malign neglect.[3]
The reasons voters turned out in their millions in the 1940’s and fifties is that they still believed in political parties, in politics and politicians. In the Atlee government of 1945, voted in by amongst others the servicemen who fought in Normandy whose courage we have just been celebrating, voters had a clear example that voting changed things and could make the world a better place. Fewer and fewer people believe that now, the default position on politicians is that they are all venal, all the same, all ‘in it for themselves.’ The recent expenses scandal merely confirmed what most members of the public secretly suspected. This poisonous cynicism lies at the root of why people don’t bother to vote and in some cases don’t even bother to register.
Though politicians fool themselves if they imagine that falling turnout is just about apathy, for at the root of this disenchantment lies a deep anger at a system that perpetually marginalises them. Already we have a government that takes no interest in the concerns of anyone under 25, if those concerns do not match their own. There are no votes to be had, or indeed lost there. Few acts have been as brazenly cynical as the Lib Dem pitch for the youth vote with its pledge on tuition fees, only to break that pledge when it became inconvenient. This angered me as much for the damage it did to the cause of electoral politics among the young as the act of betrayal itself. How many young people having experienced such dishonesty will now decline to engage with electoral politics at all? We live in the age of alienation. The alienation not just of the poor and marginalised but of great swathes of the electorate who also feel themselves disenfranchised. Under this alienation there runs a deep undercurrent of intense anger.
As a start I would recommend that, should he be
elected, Ed Miliband establish a Democratic Crisis Task force, under some truly
free thinking individual, Will Hutton or Simon Jenkins spring to mind. All
options should be on the table, registration and voting via the internet,
changes to the electoral system, a Bill of Rights, a ‘Second Amendment’,
workplace councils, you can add to the list.
 |
| Inside Portcullis House |
I had thought the Westminster Bubble a metaphor not an
actual place. I was wrong, it actually exists, on Westminster Bridge Road with
an entrance on Embankment, inside Portcullis House. A guest of Sir Malcolm
Rifkind’s research assistant, I drank coffee there last Monday. Under a glass dome,
trees growing beneath it, Steve Richards of the Independent, Emily Maitlis of
the BBC – looking abnormally glamorous for 11:45 on a Monday Morning- and a
variety of assorted MP’s, some more recognisable than others, all talking,
drinking tea, coffee, mineral water.
Through a side door you can travel under Westminster
Bridge Road and enter the Palace of Westminster itself, a short walk, lots of
oak panelling, pictures depicting various scenes relating to the Civil War and
the execution of Charles 1st and you enter the chamber of the House itself. Ludicrously
small, famously there are not enough seats for every Member, when crowded it
must feel positively claustrophobic, whilst during Prime Ministers Questions
the volume of noise a health hazard. |
| The empty chamber |
We walked out toward the river terrace following in the footsteps of Denis Skinner, incongruous in trainers, who made his way to sit, on seats overlooking the river Thames, with Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror. It was all beginning to feel woozily surreal.
Back under the actual dome itself cliché after cliché
began to close in on me, fog of dull stereotypes. Here was a closed society, an
exclusive club, still very much an old boy’s network of entitlement; and like
all cliché’s predominately rooted in truth. Whatever else this bubble
represented it felt a world away from the lives of ordinary people, of say a
single mother living on a council estate in Southwark, just across the river.
 |
| State Opening of Parliament |
Thursday saw the election of a Conservative to the
Nottinghamshire town of Newark, Robert Jenrick, the newly elected Tory MP has
no connections with the constituency. A director of the auction house
Christies, with a property portfolio running into several millions, he was
‘parachuted’, as they say, into the seat. Barring electoral earthquakes he will
continue to hold the seat in perpetuity, or until he gets bored. This is in the
jargon of our corrupt electoral system what is known as a ‘safe’ seat. What was
genuinely astonishing was that for a moment the Tories felt under threat from
the anti-European United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP. It seems that the
prospect of this even more unsavoury crowd winning prompted some Labour supporter
to vote Tory, people voting for a party they despised to block a party they
despised even more. This farce being carried out in the name of ‘representative
democracy.’
Much was made of the showing of UKIP during the recent
local and European elections, the rise of far right little Englanders being
sold as ‘the story of the night.’ “The UK Independence Party is a truly
national force, Nigel Farage says after its ... "enormous pressure"
to offer the voters a referendum on Europe.” [1]This we
were told was the message given by the electorate.This is piffle, the real message of the electorate was that that for the most part they didn’t give a toss. Turnout in the UK was 33.8%, down slightly on last time people voted in this polls. This has been the story of voter turnout since the peak turnouts in the years immediately following the second World War, the highest being 83.9% in 1950, this compares to the last general election with a turnout of 65.1%.[2] It is also worth noting that general election turnouts are much higher than other elections, the turnout for the new posts of Police and Crime Commissioners reached an all-time low of just over 18%.
The situation is even worse when it comes to voter registration, over the last few years six million people have disappeared off the electoral register. Whilst we do not have anything so crude as the grotesque phenomenon of ‘voter suppression,’ as practised in the US by the Republican Party, the vote in this country is also being suppressed, in the case of the UK by a process that can be characterised as malign neglect.[3]
The reasons voters turned out in their millions in the 1940’s and fifties is that they still believed in political parties, in politics and politicians. In the Atlee government of 1945, voted in by amongst others the servicemen who fought in Normandy whose courage we have just been celebrating, voters had a clear example that voting changed things and could make the world a better place. Fewer and fewer people believe that now, the default position on politicians is that they are all venal, all the same, all ‘in it for themselves.’ The recent expenses scandal merely confirmed what most members of the public secretly suspected. This poisonous cynicism lies at the root of why people don’t bother to vote and in some cases don’t even bother to register.
 |
| Protesting Nick Clegg's broken pledge |
Though politicians fool themselves if they imagine that falling turnout is just about apathy, for at the root of this disenchantment lies a deep anger at a system that perpetually marginalises them. Already we have a government that takes no interest in the concerns of anyone under 25, if those concerns do not match their own. There are no votes to be had, or indeed lost there. Few acts have been as brazenly cynical as the Lib Dem pitch for the youth vote with its pledge on tuition fees, only to break that pledge when it became inconvenient. This angered me as much for the damage it did to the cause of electoral politics among the young as the act of betrayal itself. How many young people having experienced such dishonesty will now decline to engage with electoral politics at all? We live in the age of alienation. The alienation not just of the poor and marginalised but of great swathes of the electorate who also feel themselves disenfranchised. Under this alienation there runs a deep undercurrent of intense anger.
II
It amuses me to hear Nick Clegg and other Lib Dem
spokespeople declaring that their current electoral meltdown is a consequence
of their decision to ‘shoulder the heavy burden of government.’ They still
don’t get it, they really think voters are that stupid. The reason that they
are now so reviled is that they stood for three elections on a left of centre
prospectus and are now propping up an extremely ideological right wing
administration. An administration driving through a hard right agenda of
austerity and cutting back basic services, an agenda supported by a small
proportion of the electorate.
‘David Cameron
was the poorest winner in his party's history, moving into Number 10 with the
support of a smaller proportion of the electorate than any previous Tory prime
minister.’ [4]
Given this stark landscape it is no longer hyperbole to
talk about the death of meaningful electoral democracy. Of course democracies
are about more than electoral politics, civil liberties and free speech are
also key components of any democratic society. Whilst in genuine democratic societies
democracy is not merely confined to voting but extended to all walks of life,
particularly the workplace.[5] However
with governments feeling themselves less and less accountable to great swathes
of the electorate these other components are increasingly threatened. I write
this as the first completely secret trial is being held in Britain for hundreds
of years,[6] whilst
freedom of speech is now regularly under attack in the guise of preventing
‘offence.’[7]
The Labour Party rightly campaigns on what it calls
‘the cost of living crises,’[8] but far
more damaging in the long term is this democratic crisis. If we are to maintain
a free and open society that protects free speech and civil liberties and
provides mechanisms for democratic representation and participation that
inspire confidence we need to radically transform the way in which we are
represented and governed.
 |
| Voting Booth with state of the art stub pencil |
III.
Sitting in the Westminster dome I was struck by how
small it all was and I I’m not just talking about the physical dimensions. The
political infrastructure in this country dates back to the end of the 19th
Century, later honed and shaped in the years of the Labour/Tory duopoly. Never
really democratic in spirit, overshadowed as it is by the royal prerogative, the
monarchy, the unelected Lords and the established church, parliament was always
a safe home for inherited privilege. As a model it was inadequate to the
challenges of 1914, it is now a wooden abacus in the age of super computers. A
comfortable cosy club, that only relatively recently permitted women to become
members, that serves the interest of the ruling elite very nicely. As for the
rest of us I think it is long past time when we said enough is enough and
started to make clear that we would now like to live in a proper democracy.
As you leave Portcullis House there is a sign that says
‘Please give precedence to Members.’ Do you think those reading that see
themselves as our servants? Sitting in the Westminster dome I was struck by how
small it all was and I I’m not just talking about the physical dimensions. The
political infrastructure in this country dates back to the end of the 19th
Century, later honed and shaped in the years of the Labour/Tory duopoly. Never
really democratic in spirit, overshadowed as it is by the royal prerogative, the
monarchy, the unelected Lords and the established church, parliament was always
a safe home for inherited privilege. As a model it was inadequate to the
challenges of 1914, it is now a wooden abacus in the age of super computers. A
comfortable cosy club, that only relatively recently permitted women to become
members, that serves the interest of the ruling elite very nicely. As for the
rest of us I think it is long past time when we said enough is enough and
started to make clear that we would now like to live in a proper democracy. |
| Please give precedence to members |
[2]
It has not be an even decline, but overall the trend has been down see :-http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/16/uk-election-turnouts-historic
[5]
This may seem like a pipe dream in the current political climate but it is
essential that we reclaim this agenda if we are to see any significant
improvement in quality of life.
[8]
In reality a low wage/poor quality of employment ‘crisis.’
