Feverishly Elective! (a political rant (sorry))

It's [Local] Election day!

*w00p*

And here in Cheltenham we have the democratic privilege of voting for our Police & Crime Commissioner (from a list of people I've never heard of and have no idea about) and our Ward Councillors (from a list of people I've never heard of and have no idea about).

Can you feel the excitement?  Taste the eagerness?  Smell the anticipatory sweat?

No?  How about sense the soul-numbing apathy?


Yup, that's more like it.

Twenty years ago, there was a genuine sense of excitement in the run-up to the General Election.  After a close run fight in '92, the Tories were flagging and Labour were in a position, for the first time since the '70s, to give them a good kicking.  They had a charismatic leader, a positive message of hope heading into the new millennium, a raft of aspirational policies, and even a catchy theme song:


(I didn't say it was a good theme song)

Sadly, as is the way with political parties, it was soon apparent that New Labour was little more than old Tory light, and '97's +70% voter turnout dropped below 60% by 2001.

Politicians on all sides blamed an apathetic generation, disinterested in politics, but from my point of view, the problem wasn't a lack of interest so much as a struggle to see the point: New Labour were two-faced, the Lib Dems were weak and the Conservatives were...well, Tories.

By the '05 election, it wasn't apathy keeping people away from the polls, it was wilful non-participation: Why vote if there's no-one worth voting for?

Jump to 2010 and we had a dull, unrelatable, unelected Prime Minister going up against a resurgent Tory party under their first leader since Thatcher with genuine balls; and the Tories still failed to secure a majority.  Of course, this was in part due to a Liberal Democrat leader who, unlike his opposition, could engage with people from behind a lectern.  It wasn't enough to make the Lib Dems a genuine 3rd contender, but it did make the country indecisive enough to result in the ConDem coalition.

However, engaging leader or not, the Dems proved as weak as ever, and a more apt. name amalgamation there has never been.

So here we are with a Tory majority* back in the saddle and back to trying to put everything in the hands of their business chums, albeit with slightly more subtlety than their straight-forward privatisation of the '80s.  This time around, they've put a pair of expendable imbeciles in charge of Education and the NHS, each with an aggressive simpleton's approach to 'improving' their respective areas.

*Quick side-note: Cameron, please stop using the phrase 'mandate from the people'.  You secured just over a third of votes from the electorate that bothered to turn up.  Of the 30.7 million people who voted, 19.4 million voted against you.  More people cast their vote in the bin than cast it for you.  Until we have a truly representative voting system, no party - whatever their majority - can claim a 'mandate from the people'.

Nicky Morgan has looked at the way a few schools have improved since becoming academies, and decided that ALL schools should do the same (because, obviously, every non-academy school is exactly the same).

Jeremy Hunt was handed a bunch of numbers he was told indicated some hospitals were a bit iffy at the weekend, and decided it was down to all junior doctors not working hard enough.

As far as the party's concerned, their moronic ideas are ideal, given that they are so staggeringly unpopular among the professionals who know better that they will lead to crippling strike action by the unions, denigrating each service to such a degree that they can be snapped up for a pittance by grateful Tory donors.

Just like the coal mines.

Then, come 2019, both proven failures can be put out to pasture (to deflect all the public backlash from the party as a whole), the Tories can put some seemingly competent people in charge of the sales, and claim, in the run-up to the election, that by replacing the 'old guard' with experienced business folks, they're in the best position to ensure the fallout is as beneficial as possible to the whole of the UK.

So what of our local elections?  Well, Cheltenham is currently in the hands of Alex Chalk; a typical Tory drone who supported cuts to child tax credits and disability benefits, and rejected the condemnation of VAT on women's sanitary products, because that was the party line, and he's so lacking in will, spine and individual thought, he couldn't possibly do something sensible without a line of blue-tied bureaucrats telling him which box to tick.

Unfortunately, his position isn't up for grabs, and so our only recourse is to surround him with enemies.

You see, my outlook has changed somewhat since those 'apathetic' days of the mid-noughties.  Everyone should vote, regardless of how samey, useless or vapid every candidate might be.  If there's no-one decent to put in place, the second best option is to remove the cretin already there.  Part of the problem with UK politics stems from the majority settling for the familiar, not because they're the best people for the job, but because the other lot don't appear to be any better.

If, however, incumbents were constantly under threat of losing their seat, they'd be forced to put the effort in, listen to the people and not be arseholes.  And the only way to light that fire under them is to show that, if they don't do a good job, they'll be replaced faster than a shit-stained toothbrush.