To vote or not to vote?

Britain’s choice-light general election

In the UK, the calling of a surprise general election has put the country into a spin. Over the pond, Americans have been fretting for the past two years about the Presidential elections in November. Elections are central to Western society, a once-in-a-five-year opportunity to bring about change.

In Britain it’s almost blasphemous to express doubt about voting. Voting is the mark of a respectable member of society, a duty that must be fulfilled if you aren’t to diminish the efforts of the Suffragettes or the sacrifice of those who fought to save the country from Hitler.

This time around, the perennial cry ‘You Must Vote’ carries more than a note of desperation. Many are now so disillusioned they no longer feel it’s worth taking part in a political process which is going to lead to more of the same. Voting advocates react to this with evangelical fervour: they don’t care how you vote as long as you vote; it’s the voting that matters. The picture below says a lot about that mindset`: the urging, the showing, the insistence on inclusiveness.

The desperation is pushing away an uncomfortable thought, one that has to do with the conditions for democracy. What makes democracy real? What gives this massive handover of power and resources legitimacy? And — the darkest of thoughts — what if now, voting achieves nothing except possibly mandate more wrongdoing? These are some of the thoughts circulating in the national psyche in the run-up to the first election since 2020.

Discussion of such ideas is just beginning in Britain. On social media and in personal conversations the ‘there’s no point in voting’ view is voiced by a wide range of people, from formerly committed voters to confirmed anarchists. The more politically-minded have a reasoned analysis for their position, while others are operating from a deep, if inchoate, sense of the wrongness of things.

The calling of the election has brought the absence of meaningful choice to the fore. Both Britain’s main parties supported the lockdowns largely responsible for getting us where we are, and MPs across all parties support the WHO Pandemic Treaty and amended International Health Regulations that would make such shutdowns and restrictions a permanent possibility. Will you vote for The Lockdown Party or The More Lockdown Party?

Meanwhile, neither seems to have any real ideas about how to address the rapid deterioration of the country manifest in the ubiquitous potholes, the unavailability of doctors and dentists, and the boarded-up shops.

‘Uniparty’ is the name commonly given to the amorphous political entity Britain’s parliamentary system now offers the electorate. It comprises, as Mary Harrington cogently puts it, ‘every mainstream political representative of the zombie-liberal consensus’ and makes for a country which ‘has no culture, no people, nothing to offer other than tourist tat, a flaccid trading zone, and some services that may be obtained on a gym-membership basis by just showing up.’

I think of the Uniparty as Yellow — no offence to the actual colour, which I love — and the choices it offers in terms of shades: which shade of yellow would you like: bright or lurid?

On the day the election was called, I turned on the tap and … nothing came out. Having the water cut off without prior notice — common in second world countries — is something I’ve never experienced in Britain before.

Listening to the radio the day after the local elections in May, I was struck forcibly by a new-old insight; it’s all a game.

The BBC was buzzing with numbers and updates on impending wins and loses. There was almost no reference to policy, which was mentioned only in relation to a seat lost or gained by one of the major parties.

Elections conducted in this way are an exercise in ‘your tribe against the other tribe’. Tribal affiliation and labels have replaced principles and foundational values and discussions of what people actually want. The labels serve as the equipment in this game of Us Vs Them, shorthand for the virtues of your tribe vs the vices of the enemy. Words for complex, multi-layered issues — how we collectively care for our health and the many people moving about an unequal world such as ‘NHS’, ‘Immigration’ — are lobbed about like grenades. This is a zero-sum game in which the only outcome is the triumph or defeat of your tribe.

‘So you won’t be voting.’ The Labour Party canvasser on the doorstep has heard my response to her question about whether I have any ‘concerns’ and put me down as A Waste of Time. She looks blank when I say that MPs are failing to consider the implications of the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty and my reference to ULEZ draws a pitying look — can’t I afford a new vehicle? She’s off down the street while I’m still explaining that the issue is much broader than that. I’m not a recruit to her army.

I understand this part of the game all too well. In 1997 I was door knocking in Islington with other members of the Labour Party. My membership ended in 2001 when the Labour government bombed Afghanistan and was contemplating invading Iraq, both on pretexts that turned out to be lies. The letter that outlined my reasons for resigning — entirely to do with foreign policy — received a three-page reply about domestic policy. Years later, I told another Labour canvasser why I could never vote Labour again. She was sympathetic. Ah, she sighed, Headquarters just wasn’t good at communication.

To believe that a communications strategy can persuade people to accept any policy, no matter how murderous or destructive, is to make a deal with the devil. For such a compact to translate into electoral success, both sides of the voting equation, the elected and the electing must be complicit in the politics of the surface. The politicians provide certain words as justifications for their actions — ‘health’, ‘climate’, or whatever — and the people take them at face value.

At election time, voters have to believe there’s a real possibility of change despite evidence to the contrary. In a two-party system, the politics of the pendulum is swung by hope, not the existence of any real alternative. Psychologists call the belief that things will turn out a certain way just because we want them to magical thinking.

Magical thinking as a way of conducting democracy has been okayish when there was an underlying consensus about the kind of society we wanted, one in which basic freedoms were respected. But now that the West has taken an authoritarian turn, The Game has become a lot less fun. The recognition that both the main parties can put an end to our way of life or ruin us all in the trying provides the emotional energy behind much of the current desperation. Electoral evangelicals advocate tactical voting as a way of keeping the other party out while openly acknowledging the party they support is a bad ‘un. Reluctant Tory supporters talk about ‘saving’ the country from Labour while their Labour counterparts claim ‘The Tories’ will be even worse.

It’s as if we’re playing for time, time to figure out how to protect ourselves against the machinations of Uniparty. What’s not happening amid all this drama is any meaningful discussion of the choices being made. There’s no assessment of lockdown or the abandonment of informed consent, nor of the implications of repeating such policies in future. Rights are being eroded on all fronts, and levels of censorship and surveillance by government or third parties is increasing. As this list of people being threatened or punished for exercising free speech compiled by Ed West shows, Britain isn’t a free country any more.

So here we are, at a time when elections have become a kind of sport or entertainment. Meanwhile, the real business of allocating power and resources goes on in the background.

Rudolf Steiner had it in his 1917 lecture ‘The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness’ 14:

‘Concepts are taken for reality, and as a result illusion may take the place of reality where human life is concerned by lulling people to sleep with concepts. They believe the fruits of their endeavours will be that every individual will be able to express their will in the different democratic institutions, and they fail to see that these institutions are such that it is always just a few people who pull the wires, whilst the rest are pulled along. They are persuaded, however, that they are part of democracy and so they do not notice they are being pulled and that some individuals are pulling the strings.’

Who benefits from the illusion of democracy? What does the illusion mask?

This is an extract from a longer essay. The full piece can be found on Substack at Ways of Seeing.