The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Vote Labour Or Else

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have dropped into my inbox for a final wheedle. If I don't vote for them tomorrow, and Michael Howard gets into Downing Street, it'll all have been for nothing and it'll all be my fault and I should tell my friends to vote. "We know we haven't done everything. We know not everyone has agreed with all we have done. But despite the challenges that remain, we are proud that Britain is a better, fairer place than eight years ago."

Not everyone has agreed with all they have done; well, this at least is true. I myself do not agree with the erosion of the health service, the privatisation of the railways, the open-rectum approach to our thrusting corporate community, the detentions without trial, the bugging of the United Nations, the starving of Iraq, the bombing of Iraq, the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of Iraq, the irradiation of Iraq, the special relationship with the Bush gang or even the plundering of Iraq. These things are not to my taste.

They haven't done everything; this too is eminently arguable. They haven't fired nuclear missiles at Iran, or sent British troops to help Ariel Sharon with his ethnic cleansing, or sold more than six dozen or so military jets to one of the potential belligerents in a nuclear war. They haven't set up more than the odd concentration camp, or arrested very many genuine terrorists, or kept their promises on tuition fees, or lived up to their obligations on greenhouse emissions, or killed, one way or another, more than a million or two people in the Middle East, or bothered to count the ones they have. They haven't reformed the electoral system.

Now, I have had the privilege of receiving several personal communications from Tony Blair or from his friends in the advertising business like Alan Milburn, John O'Farrell and, rather sadly, Stephen Fry. Milburn warns me that "if one in 10 Labour voters from 2001 don't vote Labour this time that we'll wake up 6 May with Michael Howard moving into No. 10. This cannot be overstated." Fry says in a PS that "If one in ten Labour supporters don't vote, or vote for any other party, the Tories will win." Blair and Brown say that "if just one in ten Labour supporters do that or stay at home, Michael Howard will be in Downing Street", and their email also has a little box at the top right-hand corner which says it again.

I find this rather odd. The last time I counted, Labour had 408 seats: an overall majority of 161. In our better, fairer Britain, surely a loss of one in ten votes should result in the loss of one in ten seats. That would leave Labour with 365 seats or thereabouts: an overall majority of seventy-one. Not spectacular, perhaps, but certainly workable. Whence, then, this claim that the loss of ten per cent of Labour voters means a Tory government tomorrow? Assuming the claim to be true (a large assumption, given the proclaimers), it must mean that ten per cent of votes does not translate into ten per cent of seats, but into twenty per cent or even more. It must mean that - gasp! - our electoral system is grossly unfair.

But, that being the case, why has New Labour not used its eight years of unassailable power to ensure that its programme of fairness, betterness and bombing the living shit out of people - the programme everybody wants - rests on a more secure footing than the whims of a small minority of voters? Statesmanlike and godly as Team Blair may be in other respects, this short-sighted approach to the very fundamentals of our democracy does not seem a very encouraging sign. He who lies first past the post, dies first past the post. In the unlikely event that Michael Howard does get into Downing Street, Team Blair (and the rest of us) will have only Team Blair to blame.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home