Not only is this week’s general election hard to predict in outcome, it’s even harder to decide how to vote. Voting is no longer a simple choice of party. For those not perpetually wedded to one party, here are my thoughts on how you can most usefully cast your vote.
The first choice is whether to vote or not.
Not voting is a positive choice, not the ‘dereliction of duty’ charged by those in the current bust system fearful of its demise. Its value should be carefully considered.
Not voting sends a clear signal of disinterest to those in power. This irks them as they want to be liked and, more importantly, they want to feel powerful and important. The lower the turnout the more the sense in Parliament of irrelevance – ‘I didn’t go into politics to be ignored.’ MPs expend much effort in explaining, excusing, rationalizing steadily reducing turnout – ‘people vote when it matters, etc, etc’ (yes they do, that’s the point…). You may have seen it. Not voting is the best way of registering disenchantment with today’s politics, its parties, its system of government, and its dependents in the news media and think tanks. If the turnout on May 7th is greater than the 65% of 2010, Westminster will sigh with satisfaction. Any sense that ‘we have a problem Houston’ will be put to bed.
Non-voters have the common sense not to become caught up in the whirl of judging the ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ of either/or policy promises and people, the crassness of basing their decisions on whether you do or don’t ‘like’ Russell Brand, Nigel Farage, or Ed Miliband’s mouth movements. In knowing that in the long run whichever party(s) is in power makes little real difference beyond the colour of their rhetoric, NVs are the most rational of the electorate. For example, despite the talk, we’ve really not had that much ‘austerity’ for the last five years. If we had, the economy would be similarly destitute following Margaret Thatcher’s monetarist medicine of the early 80s. The present Conservatives would be without an electoral prayer.
A non-vote is a strategic decision for major system change by the most rational of the electorate.
But voting has its purposes too.
The first amongst these is to change the party(s) of government at every election. The current system is so ineffective that all you can do is to ensure a) one party is not left governing for any longer than can be avoided, and b) fresh blood arrives to at least correct the mistakes of its predecessor. As we have found with both the Conservatives of 1979-97 and Labour of 1997-2010, the longer one party dominates the more ineffective they become, the more ideology gets its head, and the autocracy of over long-serving prime ministers takes hold with concomitant wackinesses: ‘why are you in power?’ – ‘to be in power, idiot.’
The major achievements of any modern UK government have been to correct the mistakes of its predecessors – little changes beyond this. For example, the Conservatives ran public services and the NHS into the ground in the 80s, then Labour returned these to at least the functioning but spent too much on current public expenditure, and the Conservatives returned to redress the fiscal balance and to screw up the public services once more. I term it zigzag government.
Hence, as the system is a mess, a short term view of the purpose of voting is that the only useful thing you can do is to change the government every time, especially now with the exorbitant five year term.
Another reason for voting lies in the demographics. Far more older people vote than do younger. Thus governments shower pensioners with goodies. Not even having asked for this largesse, it gets frankly embarrassing at times for older folk to walk down the street, with all those envious yet admiring eyes following one’s silver SUV, gazing at one’s handbag, and time taken at the cash machine. If other socio-demographic segments voted in sufficient number, then students might expect sumptuous grants in place of tuition fee loans, and young families might hear policies targeting many of the every day aggravations of modern living from unaccountable tax authorities to train unservices.
A vote is based on the short term objective of things becoming a bit better rather than a bit worse. It is based on hope against experience.
At this point, if you have decided to vote, then who should you vote for?
The purpose of a third party vote
First decision here is whether your vote is primarily a protest or not. If a protest then, bearing in mind the turnout effect at Westminster, the more effective option is not to vote at all. If all those protest votes became NVs instead, and thus turnout fell below 50%, even the Westminster bubble might feel obliged to really do something.
But if a vote it must be, then Green is presumably the most rational – the risk of climate chaos to the future of the human race is too great to ignore, and rather more significant than the fine margins of austerity. The higher the percentage the Green vote the more a government’s attention is drawn in this direction – the best you can do for the planet with our low democracy electoral system.
Independence movements are an early indicator of ‘The Collapse Of Complex Societies’ an enlightening book by Joseph Tainter. Essentially people look to the lifeboat of separation to escape drowning in the existing system’s stasis. A vote for the SNP, UKIP, or PC might therefore be seen as rational – except that their lifeboats are essentially constructed from the same materials as their current boat. Swap Westminster for Brussels, or Edinburgh or Cardiff for Westminster and not a lot improves – especially when the losses of independence are factored in.
The one exception here is Yorkshire First for devolution to a regional assembly with a manifesto for a new system of government locally.
The far better reason for voting for any third party is to shake up the existing bipolar political party disorder and to inject some different thinking into the corridors of power. Russell Brand may hate Nigel Farage but both are fighting the existing system – so vote UKIP, Russell?
Sufficient third party votes ensures neither of the largest parties forms a government on its own – with all of its ideology driven dangers. A coalition has to be formed to include the moderating influences of another party.
A third party vote serves the purpose of representational protest, fresh thinking at Westminster, or for a coalition not single party government.
Tactical voting
At this point in the electoral logic of the UK, the most complex calculation of all is faced – tactical voting. The aim here is to change the government but without handing an overall majority to a single party. Voters have to conspire nationally and vote locally. Where the defending MP is of a third party in a likely marginal seat, vote for him or her. Where the voting is likely to be close between Labour and a third party or Conservative and a third party, then vote third party. Finally, if it is between Conservative and Labour, then vote for the latter, so long as not so many do this to produce a Labour majority.
All of this may sound extraordinarily complex – it is. But collectively we produced the least worst outcome from our dreadful system in 2010.
Or vote to accelerate decline and to hasten real change
Is that it? Not quite. One further calculation can be made. Whoever wins, government will only get worse – such is the system in which it is housed. Our best interests may be best served by an overall majority for the Conservatives. What, you might respond? The strategy is this: one party in power for more than one term will reap more mess, and the Conservatives retain far more ideological baggage and thus the capacity for large scale error than Labour. With the Conservatives continuing in office, the decline will accelerate and promote the conditions for a serious overhaul of the system of government.
This, in turn, should initiate the formation of a party to change this system – perhaps the Treaty Party after the proposed www.treatyforgovernment.com. Short of a revolution, this is the only path to a future where voting matters once more, where politicians stand and deliver on fairness, redistribution of power, quality of public services, and the right costs and taxes. Who doesn’t want those?
Ed Straw May 2015
