The Façade Of Western Democracy Continues With The May Poll Dance

Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians. – Che Guevara

I have a confession. I’ve never believed in democracy. The idea that I could make the powers that be sit up and take notice of me through the expression of a carefully considered ballot seemed like the height of delusion to me and like Santa Claus and good credit, was a fairy tale that only privileged white children got to believe in. I’d never seen any real evidence that voting made a positive difference for people of my ethnicity or for the socially marginalised and disadvantaged and as such never voted. And if you’re there tut-tutting and shaking your head at the thought of all those brave soldiers dying for me to get the vote then stop reading now because I think you have a selective interpretation of colonialism, history and race. They certainly weren’t fighting to keep me and mine free; they were fighting to make sure they could keep us colonised, even though we had fought alongside them in the trenches. Although to be fair I doubt the grunts in the front line were doing anything other than trying to stay alive.

My eldest son reached the milestone (or is that millstone?) of voting age last year and as politics and economics student, felt it was his moral obligation to do my civic duty. The poor sod. Actually it turned out that I was the poor sod; my son was persistent and played dirty, exploiting the fact that I loved him. So I voted for the first time and chose to remain in the EU - which obviously went very well indeed. Like many, if not every young person that I know, my son was devastated by the outcome. According to polling data from YouGov, 75% of 18-24 year olds voted to remain and anecdotal evidence suggest that this percentage increases amongst 16-18 year olds. So when my son and his contemporaries look at the older generation you can forgive them for feeling a little dejected and betrayed. And my heart breaks for them.

I’ve always said to my son modern democracy, just like ‘the post-racial society’ is a façade that the powerful have used to delude the poor and ignorant in to believing they have a voice, when the voice they use is one that they’ve been hypnotised in to thinking is theirs; and this has never been more true than today. Our androgynous Prime Minister, who insists that the will of the British people has been expressed, may choose to believe that this represented by 52% of the population. But this ignores the fact that it’s 52% of people who voted, not 52% of the country and to peddle the lie that there is an overwhelming majority who wish to plough ahead with ‘hard’ Brexit is a fallacy that must not go unchallenged. The ‘we’ve got our country back’ narrative is not surprising to a cynic like me who as a man of colour growing up in England accepted racial epithets as a daily hazard. But for the younger generation descended from colonial immigration, Brexit confirms what we had told them. That being black or Asian makes you an immigrant by default and that means working twice as hard to get half as much, that they are seen as an unwelcome swarm here to take employment away from the good white citizens of this country. If the ‘ordinary, decent people’ of this country were so easily manipulated by the xenophobic rantings of a twunt like Nigel Farage then why should young people and ‘Remainers’ like me have any faith in the future?

Ironically I have faith because modern people are fortunately quite fickle – and stupid, which is why facts don’t seem to matter. Winston Churchill once said that the best argument against democracy was to spend 5 minutes with the average voter. Don’t think so? Listen to this selection of wisdom from Barnsley. The evidence on both sides of the Atlantic suggests that the right-wing populism bubble is bursting as the steady stream of lies, bluster and ineptitude reveals the true nature of the demagogues and kleptocrats leading the race to the bottom. If decent men and women ran for office I’m not sure whether the people would vote for them, but I do know that such people don’t seem to run. And people vote on whims, emotions and philosophies now, not policies; and they’re probably right to, as politicians have consistently reversed policy directions. Foreign policy in the age of Brexit makes for partnerships with dictators (Saudi Arabia) and murderous thugs (Duterte) and as for Trump…..well it’s safe to say that his forays in to Syria and North Korea are leaving everyone a little nervous.

Clearly there is ample evidence that Theresa May has lied with impunity since her coronation (remember, she wasn’t elected); after all, wasn’t she the one saying that we don’t need to have a snap election? Wasn’t she the one who claimed not to have a special arrangement with a Tory Council (Surrey) regarding increasing taxation? Isn’t she the same person who stated unequivocally that there would be no u-turns in her government only to do so within a week of announcing a punitive tax increase for the self-employed? The list is long. And here she is today, suggesting that this snap election is somehow reflective of the will of the people, that it will allow her free reign to take Brexit negotiations forward without any inconvenient opposition; which is complete nonsense as the Tories have enough of a majority to do what the hell they want anyway.

So let’s be smart in this election and exploit her cynicism in the same way that Farage, Johnson and the other chinless wonder Michael Gove, did back in May/June of 2016. Let’s have a protest vote, a tactical vote, whatever it takes to reduce the majority of this self-serving, jingoistic, greedy governing party and make Brexit the negotiating nightmare that this country’s xenophobes deserve. We owe it to our children, we owe it to ourselves. Democracy is bullshit and doesn’t mean freedom. Don’t mistake democracy for liberty. Liberty is being truly free to make a choice and we are free to utilise the process of democracy to let the ruling class know that there is a revolution afoot and we’re not going to accept their lies and greed anymore.

So f*ck democracy. If voting really mattered they’d never let us do it. So for once, let’s make them realise that the vote can matter for the right reasons.