Alternative Editorial: Enough of Pain and Glory
Image first published in the New Statesman
Like many of you reading this editorial, we are using all our efforts today to tear ourselves away from the spectacle of Westminster politics and the pain and glory it causes. However, whether you were happy or sad about the outcome, there are facts that underlie the results of the UK General Election that have severe implications for all of us. Because of that, we should pay some attention to them before we talk about what we might do next.
The first most obvious is the true result, hidden by the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system which gave such a huge majority of seats in Parliament to one party. It’s an old story, much better told by Make Votes Matter, led by the inimitable Klina Jordan, and the Electoral Reform Society. In this election, we hear that the vast majority of citizens voted for Boris Johnson and, as a result, he has a mandate to do whatever he chooses for the next five years.
In reality, the country is as divided as ever. According to the figures compiled as soon as the votes were counted, the popular vote revealed that more people voted against the Conservatives (47.6%) than for them (43.6%), yet they have a majority of x seats. In Scotland, the SNP gained 45% of the total vote share, followed by Conservative (25.1%) and Labour (18.6%). While the SNP gain enormously in terms of seats by the Westminster FPTP system (ref), they nevertheless find themselves governed at the UK level by a party that won less than a quarter of the votes in Scotland. Again, others are more eloquent about the outrage – see here Darren Hughes, Chief Executive of the ERS, interviewed by The Independent.
Remarkably, the original Brexit vote was entirely proportional as all referendums are, resulting in a 52% for Leave. In this election, if we had stayed proportional, we would have seen that 52% of people voted for a party that put a second referendum in their election manifesto. In other words the UK challenged the result of Brexit. Yet it is being broadcast back to us as a resounding vote to Get Brexit Done. That matters, right?
To some extent, this is old news – every single election has caused this kind of outcry from those that lose out most from an unfair system. Even so, there were so many other irregularities escalating this time, that the sense of injustice is severely heightened. For example, according to the non-partisan Campaign for the Reform of Political Advertising, 88% of paid-for Tory ads contained lies or misleading statements.
When the Conservatives were confronted about going as far as putting up their own website called Labour Manifesto, then paying Google to push it to the top of any search for the word Labour, they laughed it off. They had no compunction about their behaviour, or seriously attempted to evade blame that might give too much oxygen to that publicity. Instead, while others were distracted, they pushed on, devising more strategies. This is a technique learnt from the young techies who played such an important part in getting the Liberal Party’s Scott Morrison elected against the odds in Australia. These kinds of ads mess the brain: calling for an end to the very confusion they themselves deliberately caused (see our Friday blog for more on this).
While the 2% of the population that are party members are long in the tooth, by now very familiar with this battleground, we judged there was a far wider degree of public participation than ever before. As we reported in our editorials running up to this election, we have seen many fronts open up on which the public could share their own growing opinions.
From the uprisings of Extinction Rebellion, to the audiences at the Election debates, there is a growing reality that the inquisitive public is the real 4thEstate, rather than the mainstream newspapers. Yet we are nowhere near a situation (yet) where the public can more meaningfully participate in the outcome: they still have only one Parliamentary vote guaranteed in five years, and that vote, as we described above, is severely compromised.
If these are the circumstances, perhaps voters could hope to be led by the most capable leaders, willing to do what it takes to serve their interests. The Conservative Party - with infinite resources - have been able to manipulate events very successfully. But in the process, they may well have lost the trust of their traditional voters. Some of the most popular Tory MPs – Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart, Anna Soubry - have gone for good.
The progressive parties, on the other hand, failed to use the only tool they had to win, in such a broken and biddable system: their potential for collaboration. Just imagine if they had set out at the beginning of the campaign with a clear plan to win a majority by working together—what a signal that would have given to the public.
Instead, parties remained singularly focused on their separate agendas: not only refusing to work together for clear gains, but openly mocking each other and celebrating each other’s failures. We wish someone had organised the School Strikers to shame them into dropping their egos.
As a result the more poignant results of the election are the ones not explained by the numbers of seats – because we are all victims. The most obvious is the cause of climate emergency which we have been promoting throughout this election. While the Tory government added some green-ish policies into their manifesto, their refusal to show up at any climate debates, either on TV or those organised by Extinction Rebellion are probably a sign of what is to come. In particular we expect environmental de-regulation to be justified by making Britain more globally competitive. Watching Greta Thunberg struggle to be heard at COP in Madrid, is heart-breaking. See here for one climate scientist’s howl of outrage.
The second is more difficult to describe but we imagine is resonating with many of you – the spectacle of ever more powerlessness for the long-term disempowered. This is the low-paid, “bullshit jobs” worker who has been on the receiving end of austerity (which Boris audaciously disowned during the election) for the past ten years. Possibly now visiting food banks, and with no GP available or hospital bed free should they get sick.
That person was somehow persuaded that this government will act in their interests; that Brexit will improve their daily lives in any way, or give them back control over their circumstances. This in without any mention of devolution or more local power. Without any evidence of where new jobs will come from (unlike Labour’s Green New Deal) or how nurses will be recruited. Instead, only one day after the election we hear that the CEO ofWeatherspoonshas made£44m overnight as a result of the landslide.
While some will be experiencing triumph today because their original Brexit vote will be honoured, there will still be those around them – as described above – who know better. What the popular vote shows us, is polarisation will continue in the place you live. It’s easy to forsee the demands that Scotland – maybe also Wales and Northern Ireland – will make to break away from the Union. It’s less easy to see - until it erupts further down the line – these demands for autonomy arise in the communities that broke away from their traditional forms of solidarity to vote Tory. Maybe we should take, as a warning, the climate protests that began soon after Morrison’s election, as bush fires rage around the outskirts of Sidney. Too little too late, some will say. Waking up is what we call it.
So how does any of this make what A/UK considers to be our commitment – emerging an alternative political system – any easier or more difficult? Certainly before the election we were clear that a pro-climate coalition of parties would have made the task before us easier. We would have a fairer wind overall for the kind of radical initiatives needed to give us any chance of reaching zero-carbon by 2030 – let alone 2025.
But now that our political reality has settled differently, we can see the advantages of that too. Since there is every evidence that the political culture across Parliament will not give rise to the kind of behaviour needed to make urgent changes possible, it might become clearer to more people that they must shift their own gaze.
Not only because we can find fertile ground working with grass-roots or municipalities, within national networks of innovation practices of all kinds. But also because that is where the most urgent task lies – to bring people together to act in their own interests in the place they live. Without that, they will remain vulnerable to the harnessing of their power to the vested interests of very small numbers of people.
So from this week, we resume normal service. Meaning turning our full attention back to collaborating rather than advocating for collaboration. Building rather than protesting. Our first job, before the end of 2019 is to bring a core-group of our co-creators together to help us see and activate better the system that, as Buckminster Fuller described, makes the old one obsolete.
Citizens Action Networks, cosmo-localism, new organic tech systems for better deliberation and decision making, Flatpack Democracy, Civic Squares, Fearless Cities, Neighbourhood Forums, Talkshops, Fourth Sector Economy.. it’s all there, waiting to move into new relationship to challenge the climate emergency. If political parties can’t deliver, the people are #doingitanyway.
The 2010s are not over yet. The 2020s are in sight and set to be the most important decade of our life-times. Get on board.
