Well, there we have it, another
UK General Election out of the way; and ultimately the "best" of the
two likely candidates for the job of Prime Minister, now firmly back in 10
Downing Street, ready to commit this country to yet another 5 years of
ideological tinkering, tampering and change. Personally, I have never had a
very high opinion of David Cameron as a national political leader, as in my
opinion, he is entirely a product of his class, an entitled rich kid who believe
that he was and is destined for great things, including the running of our
country, through which he can create a political, social and economic legacy
that will last forever. Like I said, David Cameron was probably the
"best" of the two likely candidates for the post of Prime Minister at
the General Election, only being marginally better than his opponent Ed
Miliband, although to my own way of thinking, having to choose at all between
the two, is a bit like asking the British people to pick whether they want to
be poisoned or shot, which isn't much of a choice really!
Political personalities aside
however, the most important thing that I will take away from this particular
election campaign is not only the absolute absurdity of Britain's First-Past-The-Post
voting system, which has once again helped to disenfranchise millions of
voters, but also the possibly conspiratorial, questionably legal and outright
biliousness of some parts of it, which would have done credit to some of the
most undemocratic and vile electoral systems in the world.
To illustrate the initial point
on FPTP, the final electoral outcome has the Conservative with 37% of the
popular vote, which gives them 331 seats in the House of Commons, Labour comes
next with 31% of the vote and 232 seats, the SNP achieved 5% of the vote and
gets 56 seats, then there's the Liberal Democrats with 8% of the popular vote,
for which they get 8 parliamentary seats. However, when you then look at the
popular vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP, they attracted
around 13% of the popular vote, but only managed to get 1 parliamentary seat,
which by any stretch of the imagination cannot be fair. It has already been
estimated that under a proper proportional representation (PR) system, UKIP's
share of parliamentary seats would have been around 83, clearly a massive
increase on the derisory single seat, which has in effect left nearly 4 million
UKIP voters without any sort of meaningful representation in this country's
parliament. Call it "sour grapes", or whatever you will, but it
cannot be right that another minor party Plaid Cymru attracted around 1% of the
total popular vote in the UK wide elections, yet gets 3 times the
representation of UKIP, which had 13 times the number of voters!
Clearly the question remains
whether or not David Cameron and his Conservative Party have any real incentive
to introduce a much more equitable Proportional Voting System, as along with
Labour, they benefit directly from the existing FPTP electoral system. It's
worth making the point of course that it isn't just UKIP that has been
disadvantaged by our archaic FPTP voting system. The Green Party attracted
nearly one million votes in the General Election, yet were only rewarded with a
single MP, meaning that their supporters were similarly penalised by the
system, leaving them too with little or no practical political representation
in the House of Commons. Under the much more commonly used D'Hondt System of
Proportional Representation, applied throughout most of Europe and some of our
own devolved regional assemblies, the allocation of parliamentary seats would
have been much more equitable to everyone, excepting of course the two big
British political parties, Conservative and Labour, who benefit directly from the
much less representative FPTP system.
However, just to illustrate the
point, under D'Hondt, the Conservatives would have won approximately 250 seats,
Labour around 200, the Liberal Democrats 50, UKIP 83, The SNP 25, The Greens 23
and so on, giving us a House of Commons that was truly reflective of the
national mood and of the British people's views. As to whether or not we'll
ever get that truly representative elected chamber anytime soon is unclear, as
that would require brave political leadership, which I personally do not
believe David Cameron is capable of. In common with previous Conservative and
Labour leaders my instinct is that he will always choose to put PARTY before
PEOPLE and on that basis alone he has no incentive to bring real representative
democracy to our country.
The other great defining aspect
of the recent General Election; and of other recent electoral campaigns in the
UK, has been the actual tone and content of them, in terms of who and what is
being discussed, as opposed to the promises and pledges being made by the
various competing parties. I have to say that in my own personal opinion, this
most recent General Election campaign has been the dirtiest, most negative,
intimidatory, vile and dishonest that I can ever recall and most of it
conducted through the mediums of our social media, national broadcasters, daily
newspapers and mass mailshots. According to research carried out by a number of
academics, by far the worst political party for negative campaigning was the
Labour Party, followed by the Conservatives, although polling by ITV has also
suggested that the Tory campaign was seen to be dirtier and more negative than
Labour's, by over 30% of those who were asked, as opposed to 20% for Labour.
Ridiculous scaremongering, verbal
abuse, physical attacks, damage to property, libellous and slanderous remarks,
disruption, marches, stalking, intimidation, threats, fraud and outright lies
have all been a feature of this most recent electoral campaign, with the police
and the electoral authorities most noticeable by their absence. Whilst the
Conservatives and Labour parties have traded blows with one another over the
vexatious topics of policy, personal attributes and potential future political
partnerships, the very worst, almost universal bile, hate and condemnation has
been levelled by virtually all other parties towards UKIP, its members,
supporters and representatives. Dozens of its offices have been damaged,
thousands of its posters and hoardings have been destroyed, defaced or removed,
its activists have been insulted, abused and attacked, while at the same time
their personal lives and activities have been minutely scrutinised for evidence
of potential wrongdoing; and where it doesn't exist, has even been invented. It
is a remarkable achievement by any stretch of the imagination that any
mainstream British political party, which has been so viciously attacked,
demeaned, lied about, scrutinised, misrepresented and undermined has still
managed to survive to become the third force in our national political life.
Standing third in over 300 parliamentary seats, second in 120 constituencies
and with only a single MP to represent the 4 million people who voted for its
policies, if nothing else UKIP stands as a reminder of the derisory state of
British politics at present, something that we should all be complaining about.
As has been previously mentioned
in this blog, in "Vote Labour: Vote For The Mob:" activist groups
such as HnH, UAF, SWP and any number of other street mobs, funded in part or in
whole by central government, larger political parties and the trade union
movement, have been employed to both disrupt and damage UKIP's political
campaign and reputation, using whatever means necessary to get the job done.
Although one recognises that politics is a
rough old game; and as the expression goes, "if you can't stand the
heat, get out of the kitchen", we now seem to have entered a period of
British politics, where what few rules that did exist to modify people's worst
behaviour, are now routinely ignored by the press, the broadcasters, the
parties themselves and perhaps more worryingly by the relevant enforcement
authorities. The fact that one of the most notable anti-UKIP activists has
publicly proclaimed that they and their cohorts can say what they want, do what
they want and act like they want, because they are not formally affiliated to
the Labour Party, or the Trade Union movement is perhaps typical of the mindset
of such anarchic activists, whose only concern is what they think, what they
want, what they want to do; and pretty much screw everybody else! Is that
really the sort of democratic country that their paymasters in the
Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat parties, or the Trade Union movement
want to live in?
More depressing though is the
fact that the country's principle broadcaster, which purports to transmit
democracy to those parts of the world where none exist, can unilaterally decide
which British political party's message it will broadcast to the nation,
without any sort of independent oversight being in place. Even though UKIP was
awarded "major" party status by the UK's national communications
ombudsman, OFCOM, giving it parity with the Labour, Conservative and Liberal
Democrat parties, the BBC unilaterally took the decision that such parity would
only exist in terms of Party Election Broadcasts, as opposed to the wider
electoral coverage that was offered to the Conservative and Labour parties. One
could easily have been forgiven for thinking that UKIP had become a wholly
"invisible" party as far as the BBC were concerned, with little if
any airtime given to its representatives, or indeed to its manifesto, which was
widely regarded as being one of the party's most important assets. It is an
absolute scandal that a clearly defined major British political party, which
was routinely attracting double digit support in the country and that had
decisively won the previous years European Elections with around 27% of the
popular vote, was denied coverage by Britain's principle broadcaster, which is
after all both paid for and supposedly accountable to that very same British
electorate.
The BBC's obvious political bias
and its largely undisclosed European funding aside however, perhaps the
greatest "crime" that was committed during this recent General
Election campaign was the implied threat of a future Labour government being
held hostage by a Scottish insurgent force, in the shape of the SNP. Now, while
holding no sympathy for either party, it seems to me that there was a concerted
effort by both the Conservative Party and its tame Tory press to not only
promote this perceived political threat individually, but also in concert, in
an almost conspiratorial fashion, which for me as a voter was little sort of an
exercise in anti-democratic propaganda, facilitated by like-minded individuals,
with little concern for the wider public good.
After all, wasn't it the
Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that actually created the
Scottish parliamentary system that has allowed the SNP to grow and to thrive;
and now they complain about its unhealthy influence on British political life?
What sort of message does that send to Scottish nationalist voters, that they
can achieve a breakthrough in Britain's national political life, only to have
it snatched away through the underhanded machinations and scaremongering of the
Conservative Party, whose sole intention was to spread fear and despair through
the entire electorate, using the SNP as the bogeyman with which to undermine
the Labour Party's electoral campaign.
That isn't to say that Nicola
Sturgeon and Alex Salmond didn't enthusiastically encourage the lie, but almost
entirely for their own selfish reasons. What better way to win a second
Scottish Independence Referendum than for them to make the case that the
British (or English) political system is completely skewed against the Scottish
nation and its people, which is exactly the argument that David Cameron's
Conservatives have now helped them to make. Perhaps ultimately Mr Cameron's
most lasting political legacy to the United Kingdom, will be as the principle
architect of its actual destruction, thus bringing an end to a 300-year-old
Union that most people are not that bothered about any more?
Generally speaking I have no doubt
that David Cameron considers himself to be a decent and honourable man, as do
most of the other 650 people who will shortly take their places in the House of
Commons and set themselves the task of governing the country for the next 5
years. However, its worth asking the question, just how many of those
supposedly honourable members have given their tacit or explicit approval for
their supporters, agents and activists to lie, steal, misrepresent,
fraudulently accuse, criminally damage, verbally abuse, or physically attack
their political opponents, on their way to achieving their exalted status. It's
easy to understand why even this most recent "generational" election,
an estimated 40% of the electorate, those entitled to cast their ballot, ultimately
chose to refuse the right to elect a possible liar, election-fiddler,
fraudster, forger, drunk, extremist, sex-pest, wife-beater, expenses-cheat, or
whatever other wrongdoing that a fair proportion of the members of that august
house will have been involved in.
Having achieved 37% of a 60%
turnout David Cameron is without doubt the winner of the election and has the
right to be declared the democratically elected leader of the UK, by virtue of
the fact that the biggest minority voted for him. However, he doesn't speak for
me personally, as I didn't vote for him or his party. Along with 4 million
other people Douglas Carswell MP speaks for me, as he represents what I believe
in, what I voted for and what I would like to see for my country. Whether or
not David Cameron and his Conservative Party can live up to his pledge of
governing for the entire country, we'll wait and see, but I won't be holding my
breath over it!
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