Today, the mighty
David Shameron has pleaded with Labour, Lib Dem and Green Party
voters in Rochester to back the Conservative candidate in the
upcoming by-election (caused by the defection of sitting MP Mark
Reckless to UKIP).
Obviously, this is
to the prevent the potential bloodbath that's looking more likely if
the latest Ashcroft poll is correct which puts UKIP in the lead with
44% while the Tories trail in second place with 32%. He stated:
‘I would say to
people who have previously voted Labour, Liberal, Green or anything,
that if you want a strong local candidate and don’t want some Ukip
boost and all the uncertainty and instability that leads to, then
Kelly is the choice.’
What's depressing
about this is that if Shameron hadn't led everyone up the garden
trail over the issue of the EU, Reckless would probably never have
defected in the first place. However, it's not just the issue of the
EU any more. It's the total discrediting of the three main parties in
general and what has lead to it. While there is certainly no such
thing as a perfect government (even Mrs Thatcher was a far cry from
that), there is no excuse for the utterly piss poor excuse for
governance we've had since approximately 1997. More than ever,
substance has been substituted in favour of style leading to a
generation of political eunuchs who don't seem to stand for anything
in particular other than the colour of the party they represent.
We can see the
outcome, not just in the poor state of those who govern but in other
areas of political life. BBC Parliament are today broadcasting the
coverage of the 1964 election, in which Harold Wilson and the Labour
Party defeated Sir Alec Douglas-Holme to end 13 years of Conservative
government. The turnout for that election was 77.1%. This was down
from the high of 1950 with 83.9% (still the highest turnout since the
franchise was extended to both sexes in 1918 and to adults over 21 in
1928) but is still significantly higher than the turnout in the years
since 1997. For the record:
-1997-71.4% turnout
(despite being the landslide election for Ton Blair)
-2001-59.4% turnout
(the lowest since 1918)
-2005-61.4% turnout
(first time Labour had won three consecutive elections)
-2010-65.1% turnout
(resulted in a hung parliament despite earlier polls predicting
Conservative landslide)
If we take the
figures of every election since 1918, a worrying trend emerges:
-1918-57.2
-1922-73
-1923-71.1
-1924-77
-1929-76.3
-1931-76.4
-1935-71.1
-1945-72.8
-1950-83.9
-1951-82.6
-1955-76.8
-1959-78.7
-1964-77.1
-1966-75.8
-1970-72
-1974
(February)-78.8
-1974 (October)-72.8
-1979-76
-1983-72.7
-1987-75.3
-1992-77.7
-1997-71.4
-2001-59.4
-2005-61.4
-2010-65.1
The mean average is
approximately 73% although as we can see it never dropped below 71%
until 2001 (by which point Tony Blair had lost much of his shine and
the Conservatives ran a terrible campaign). While turnout had
recovered to 65% by the time of the 2010 election I fear that the
current anti-politician climate will erode it again or at the very
least prevent a return to the figures of the pre 1997 period.
It's not just the
turnout you have to keep in mind. There's also the issue of the
percentage of the vote that each party obtains. Now in a system such
as ours (first past the post), the popular vote is technically
irrelevant since the result is on the basis of seat numbers in the
House of Commons (although in 1929, 1951 and February 1974 the
winning party had less of the popular vote than the party in second
place). In 2005 for example, the Labour Party won with a mere 35.2%
of the vote. Is it really feasible to have one party in power on such
a low number? I accept that no government or party has received an
absolute majority of the vote since the 1931 election (even Thatcher
only managed to poll in the low 40s) but 35%?
At least with higher
turnouts, the percentages tend to be larger and thus confer a greater
degree of legitimacy on whomever the winner is. I fear that as time
goes on, if politicians allow themselves to become even more
disconnected from the people they are supposed to represent, a great
rift will emerge that could one day have violent consequences. I do
not wish for anyone to think I believe riots are imminent but there
are plenty of other parts of the world where political malaise has
lead to dark forces taking advantage difficult situations for their
own ends (before anyone jumps in, no I'm not claiming UKIP are said
“dark forces).
The unedifying
affair of Shameron asking other parties to vote for his candidate not
on the basis his policies but on the basis of just trying to keep one
party out stinks and is the kind of thing that might actually push
people into voting for UKIP. Indeed, the media pressure put on them
prior to the European elections this year probably helped cultivate
an image of UKIP being bullied by the larger, more well established
parties.
It might have worked
against the BNP but the BNP were always something of a fringe group
and a one man show which could never shake off its past connections
to all manner of unpleasant characters. As a result it was very easy
to smear and in turn did itself even more damage through infighting,
especially since a number of people on the white nationalist side of
things seemed to hate him more than they hated the political
establishment they were opposed to. UKIP, whether you agree with them
or not (and despite the presence of some idiots who make very strange
statements) do not have the same image problem and so far hasn't had
the internal fractures that the BNP did.
Rather than
belittling UKIP, it's voters or trying to make up pacts to
outmanoeuvre them, Shameron should perhaps return to sound
Conservative principles of governance, even if we do only have 7
months left to go before election day 2015. I suspect a giant blue
pig is more likely to fly past my bedroom window than Shameron is to
do that.
Has it also not occurred to him that there potentially Labour voters who would rather vote UKIP than Tory?
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