Our Democratic Duty

There’s a general election looming in Britain. It will be won by either the Conservatives or New Labour, with the Lib Dems in third place. It’s been that way since before Adam knew what fig leaves were for. It used to matter which party won, but it doesn’t any more because the major parties no longer provide a well defined choice between ideologies. Mrs Thatcher killed off the Tories; Tony Blair did the same for the Labour Party. In modern Britain, commerce is king and the new god is the free market economy. That means that all three major parties now tailor their policies to the same section of the electorate – the flock of brain-dead sheep known collectively as Middle England. The political parties and the conformity-obsessed public feed off each other in a state of complacent symbiosis, convincing one another that everything is all right and that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Each time there is an election, focus turns to the question of low voter turnout. The politicians like to call it ‘voter apathy,’ conveniently forgetting that they have become among the least trusted body of people in the land, and that they are not actually giving us any choice in what we’re voting for. I, for one, have stopped listening to senior politicians. There’s no point, because almost everything they say falls into one or more of five categories. It’s either pointlessly predictable, evasive, manipulative, untrue, or just plain stupid. They’re becoming worse than advertising executives.

And yet the bastions of Middle England tell me that I must vote. Democracy was hard-won, they say; it is my duty to choose one candidate over another. No it isn’t. Firstly, if the major parties are all offering pretty much the same thing, then the concept of democracy is an illusion. More to the point, however, is the fact that democracy does not require people to vote for one or other of the candidates. The point of democracy is that it gives everyone a choice. If you don’t like any of the candidates or what they stand for, your democratic ‘duty’ is to abstain. Telling people that they have to vote for somebody they don’t want is the very denial of democracy.

And so I intend to go to my polling station in May and see who is standing in my constituency. If I don’t find a name there that I feel I want to vote for – which will almost certainly be the case - I will mark my ballot paper ‘none of the above.’ The paper will be considered ‘spoiled’ and discounted, but at least I will have honoured those who fought for democracy. I will have done my duty.