backing blair back
Thinking of voting for New Labour on May 4th? Here’s one or two reasons why you maybe shouldn’t.
- “Putting King Herod in charge of a maternity wardâ€Â
- Astroturfing
- Tax credits
- Basra: “a mini-Iran-come-Sicily”
- “Several hundred” terrorists was actually only 11
- John Reid: Firebombs are better than napalm
- Margaret Hodge to Rover workers: Get a job at Tesco
- Stifling protest
- UK arms sales to Africa reach £1 billion mark
- Pisspoor computer system #1
- Verah Kachepa
- Walter Wolfgang
- Memorandum of Understanding #1
- Charles Clarke: “I welcome the decision” on allowing information extracted under torture.
- Memorandum of Understanding #2
- Sent back to Iraq by mistake
- Pisspoor computer system #2
- Innocence is no defence
- The Respect Action Plan
- Pisspoor computer system #3
- The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
- Olive Mukaraguwiza
- Pisspoor computer system #4
- ID cards
- The treatment of the July 7 bombings survivors
- “A decent and honourable man”
- Cash for peerages
- “Here we are not tortured physically but mentally we are tortured.”
- “Get away from me, I will not be insulted by you, this is an insult“
- “Hoon plans curb on MPs’ questions”
- “If this was anything to do with trying to appeal to the electorate, he wouldn’t be so excruciatingly honest”
- Pisspoor computer system #5
- Pisspoor computer system #6
- A slight miscalculation
- Maya Evans
- Extraordinary rendition: ignorance is bliss
- Pisspoor computer system #7
- Pisspoor computer system #8
- Sally Cameron
- Pisspoor computer system #9
- Immigration cells ‘like kennels’
- John Reid: Be slow to condemn
- The politicisation of the police…
- …or maybe not
- 28 days
- The Politics of Fear
- No inquiry into 7 July bombings
In the lead up to the General Election last year while a cheerleader for the Backing Blair tactical voting campaign, I kept a list, updated throughout, of the reasons as to why I thought New Labour didn’t deserve being returned to power. As it turned out, only 22% of the electorate disagreed.
With the New Labour campaign for the local elections being launched this week and a newly invigorated Backing Blair up and running, and while the old reasons not to vote New Labour still apply, I thought I’d compile another list of reasons, dating from the General Election, as to why New Labour don’t deserve your X on May 4. ID cards or the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill are enough on their own to damn this Government.
The central message of the Backing Blair campaign is “Don’t Vote Labour“:
Labour MPs, councillors, candidates and activists all need to understand that - as long as Blair remains in power - they can no longer count on our vote.
No doubt Polly Toynbee will be parading her nosepegs again and reminding us of all the cheap baubles New Labour has given us to make our lives marginally less shit than they were under the Tories. Maybe others will again choose to insult those who do not wish to vote New Labour or tell them endlessly that a protest vote risks allowing the Tories in by the back door.
Now, my council, Brighton and Hove, aren’t having elections this year. The next ones are 2007. So, this is going to sound a little Operation Clark County. But given my vote this year I’d go further than not voting New Labour. On May 4 I’d scrawl “NONE OF THE ABOVE” across my ballot paper.
Still-raw memories of the Thatcher years preclude many of us from giving the Tories our vote. Cameron has no policies to speak of and may yet reveal himself as the slavering neo-conservative many people suspect him to be. The Lib-Dems, let’s face it, are little more than a receptacle marked “protest vote” and on a local level they can’t be trusted - you never know what you’re going to get from council to council. I don’t fancy voting for a coalition of ex-Stalinists and muslim fundamentalists or a single issue party.
I’ve said it before but low turnouts at elections get spun by the victors for their own purposes. John Prescott once blamed low turnout on a “culture of contentment” among voters. Non-voters get branded lazy and apathetic when in actual fact low turnouts are largely caused by a dangerous and depressing dislocation from our so-called democratic process.
To turn out to spoil your ballot, however, sends a message. It’s a rejection of our political system and our grossly inadequate, unrepresentative and inequitable electoral system.
Jim Bliss made the point on his old blog, in possible the finest General Election blog post written during the 2005 campaign, that:
But my vote will have None of The Above written in large black letters across it. Thanks to this archaic system, that means my vote will be declared “spoilt” and lumped in with all the morons who thought they could vote for 3 candidates. But with a bit of luck one of the candidates will be walking past the table when my vote’s counted and will realise that at least one of the spoilt ballots was a protest vote against every single one of them standing in that room.
I’d argue that spoiling one’s ballot isn’t as potentially fruitless as Jim says. Spoilt ballots are counted. Imagine if councillors were elected at the forthcoming elections with fewer votes that the number of spoilt ballots. If more people got off their arses to say that our system isn’t working and they’ve had enough than voted for the winners, wouldn’t that be something?
Don’t vote Labour. Or anybody else. Tell them that until they listen to us, give us real democracy and reform their corrupt, evasive, unaccountable, money-grabbing, expense-exploiting, primus inter pares contempt for us, their paymasters and employers, we want none of them.
The hired help, the servants, are no good. They’ve forgotten their place - we are upstairs, it is they who are downstairs. This isn’t The Servant, it’s The Remains of the Day. When an employee is lazy, dishonest and mendacious you don’t reward him. In days gone by recalcitrant servants were thrashed.
Time to get out the None Of The Above vote.
Update: Chris over at Stumbling and Mumbling has a great post replying to this one and advocating a boycott of elections.
His is an attractive argument but needless to say, I prefer something a little more proactive. (Although there’s absolutely nothing preventing both points of view working independently and yet in concert with each other.)
However, a campaign using something like Suzon’s “none of the above” rubber stamps or even simple stickers all of the same design would be a striking visual protest that surely wouldn’t fail to plant a seed of doubt in politician’s minds. I’d argue a unified “visual style” of ballot spoiling would move the “none of the above” camp away from intimations of what Chris calls “inconsequential lunacies” towards the impression of an orchestrated movement. And yet, you wouldn’t be creating another political movement but a very loosely connected - practically gaseous - coalition.
Posted on April 6th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
| See also • Stale bruschetta • Silence is consent • The Last Word (until the next one) |
Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe By Email • Print This Post • • • |
|
Filed under Comment is Free, New Labour, Off Yoghurt, UK politics |
Justin,
Purely on the issue of government computer systems it might be worth checking this out;
http://www.itsafe.gov.uk/
Or Google ITsafe.
“the systems isn’t working”
How would you fix the system?
Answers along the lines of “I would have some better politicians” do not count.
If there is no better systems available, then how much sense does it make to berate the system, if it is the best that is available?
I do think it is worth discovering whether your local Councillor is a party clone or not… I am uncomfortable with the Parliamentary parties launching local campaigns.
I find myself in a similar position, but for very different reasons. I am the last living person (outside his own family presumably) who would still vote for TB (the man, not the disease).
Yet I can’t. I can’t because my local labour party opposed the war (yup, I’m a bloodthirsty warmonger, and no longer a member of the people’s party). I can’t because the prospect of Brown in charge is just too much. Milliband perhaps, but Brown no, never.
I could never vote Tory. And I will never vote for those duplicitous, lying, cheating Lib Dems. My proudest moment was seeing a Lib Dem councillor fleeing up the road pursued by my dog. Right enough he later turned down my planning application, but ‘Exit stage left - pursued by a dog’ was sufficient recompense.
As ever, there are many reasons not to do something. And few reasons to be positive. Perhaps it’s even time for neo-con fascist warmongers like me to forget the war.
The list of candidates hasn’t been published for my ward yet, but it’s safe Tory (I have to wear a jacket and tie outside the house, just to be allowed to live here). If there’s no Green candidate, I will for the first time ever have no idea whom to vote for.
Like Jim, I’d happily spoil my vote if only I thought it would be noticed and not thrown in the bin. I can’t bring myself to vote for any of the three main parties, I have no time for Galloway, UKIP are racists (yes, they are) and anyone who votes BNP is obviously going straight to hell without passing Go. I don’t agree with 50% of what the Greens say, but they’re the least objectionable.
Democracy is shit, isn’t it?
I guess you’re ruling out the Green Party as well - single issue, perhaps?
The bonus in Brighton and Hove is that a few extra Greens at the locals will result in a very hung council. Unable to agree a decision between themselves the council might resort to asking the people what they think.
In a mayoral election in Stoke on Trent last year over 7,000 people returned a blank ballot apparently in protest at having an elected Mayor. They still got one though….
Spoilt ballots are split into 6 or 7 categories, as I found when I spoilt mine in 2001. If you want to stand out from the crowd I recommend making yourself identifiable on the ballot paper.
In today’s New Statesman I’m offering a 2″ x 1″ “none of the above” rubber stamp for 11 pounds which is 50p under RRP and includes free p&p and a leaflet. I will include your URL on the leaflet and also on the leaflet I’m going to be stuffing through 300 letterboxes in my neighbourhood. After the election, I’ll be able to get a rough measure of the effectiveness of spoiling ballot papers with “none of the above” by comparing ward results. The idea of the stamp, by the way, is to publicise (in a modest way) the growing numbers of refusniks and to create a tangible symbol of great public unrest. Feel free to copy the idea. The more the merrier. You may even be able to get a better price.
Re Stoke Mayoral election: the figure was in fact nearly 10,000, or nearly ten per cent of the votes cast. Incidentally, Labour won…and suddenly all the objections about the idea that coincide with an independent winning just melted away….
Spoiling vs shirking…
Quickie before everyone departs for an early-evening pint in the sunshine… Is it better to spoil your ballot or simply stay at home? Two heavyweights of the blogosphere, in two great posts, are in disagreement. Justin opts for the former,……
Why not change your name by deed poll to: “none of the above” and stand in an election? You might just win….
Louis, can’t speak for Justin, but pretty sure he favours some sort of electoral reform; FPTP is one of the core problems with politics, across the board, it institutionalises the corruption that we now see, at all levels.
[...] Thinking about voting Labour on the 4th of May ? Do yourself and the rest of the nation a favour and read this first… [...]
Its a tough decision, to spoil the ballot or not turn up. Either way voting for any of the parties is out of the question. I so wish the electoral process in this country was reformed so thats peoples votes actually did count.
I agree with the comment above that national parties launching local campaigns seems odd. But labelling the LibDems a protest vote in local elections when they run councils up and down the country is a little unfair. Rather than saying you don’t know what you’d get, why not judge them on their manifesto and councillors in Brighton? If you don’t like them then, fair enough.
Luis: Excuse me? Why does “I would have some better politicians” not count? This blog and many like it are monuments to the fact that many of us wouldn’t trust this Government to run a provincial rotary club let alone the fourth largest economy in the world. And there’s masses of evidence to back us up.
It’s the rancid personalities at the top of the tree that are largely responsible for political disengagement. Do the phrases “sofa government”, “kitchen cabinet” (that one not invented by Blair, I hasten to add.) and “presidential style” mean nothing to you?
Still, if you insist on shaping the debate, how about…
As MatGB says, how about a more representative electoral system? What about political parties being funded by their membership meaning the high commands must engage with and act on the needs and ideas of the grassroots - a return to bottom up policy making? If you were solely reliant on your members for your cash you’re going to have to relearn how to listen pretty damn quick.
And how about some level of direct democracy as in places like Switzerland? Allow the people to make real decisions about issues that affect them.
Giving people more opportunities to engage gives them less excuses to opt out. If politics isn’t to be constricted in it’s ever tightening bubble, people must more input other than the right to turn up every four years to rubber stamp the agenda (which you only may partially agree with) of a largely deaf political parties.
Will: That’s a fair point about the protest vote. The thing is that Lib Dem policy can vary so wildly from council to council that it’s difficult to spot the over-arching strategy. How would you define a recognisably Lib Dem council?
You’re right that (would-be) councillors should be judged on their manifestos but how many people take the time? Don’t the majority of people who bother to vote in local elections vote along tribal lines anyway?
Paul (Make My Vote Count) and Davide… I’ve just posted this comment over at MMVC, but figured it was worth reproducing here in the hope it adds something to the debate…
================
The problem - as I see it - with abstention is the fact that it so often gets painted as “voter apathy” which irritates me. I don’t want to give the impression that I “can’t be bothered” voting… a message which actually reinforces the willingness of politicians to act in their own interest (”Well, if they can’t be bothered telling us what they want, then we’ll just have to give them what we want!”)
Of course, spoiling your vote with “None of the above” can get you lumped in with morons who don’t know how to use a ballot paper.
However if you manage to mobilise enough people to write “None of The Above”, there will be a massive (relative) increase in the number of spoilt papers. Whereas if you campaign for abstentions; even if your campaign is successful it will only register as a small percentage increase in the number of stay-at-homes, as that’s already a very large number (especially in the locals).
So as a political tactic designed to make a statement, a campaign to spoil ballots has a far greater change of success (statistically speaking).
It’s not just Labour voters feeling let down. I can’t bring myself to re-vote Liberal Democrat, (they have alienated young voters by electing Menzies as leader) might consider Conservatives sometime in the future, and I have an innate dislike of Labour.
None of the above. [X]
Charlie Falconer’s broken record…
Lord Falconer, who is reviewing voting systems, was cool on the commission’s call for proportional representation at Westminster, saying there were “no plans” for reform before the next general election. He argued that the first-past-the-post system…
Schooled in scandal…
Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes’s timely litany of New Labour’s failings overemphasises the same sins that brought down the Tories….