This week, the Grand Asset Stripper Theresa May called for a general election. Parliament voted and the date was set. Even Jeremy Corbyn, who is meant to represent the opposition, came out in support of the vote. Everything seems to be going in favour of the Arms Dealer in Cheif, the support for the General Election may as well be Corbyn’s political suicide note. Of course, this is what May wants. She does not like the existence of an opposition, they are getting in the way. Her corporate friends are lining up to buy all the public services after all. Richard Branson has had his eyes on the NHS for a while now and the Labour Party have been getting in the way. After the 8th of June, with little resistance May and the loathsome Jeremy Hunt will finally get to hand the NHS off to the lowest bidder completing Thatcher’s Neo-liberal project.
Maybe we should just accept this, it is the state of the world. Solidarity has died a death, “individual choice” reigns supreme. We should be glad, in years to come, that we have the opportunity to pay for Virgin Protection (TM)/BritLaw PLC to keep us safe. We, or rather the fortunate few who can afford it, can sit a home happy that our children are being educated in Private, Public and Grammar Schools and that thankfully all those horrid Comprehensives have been turned into Academies and auctioned off. The Corporations make those lower class students into such compliant workers, after all. I mean, yes, it is a shame that Scotland left the UK, but they were just Traitorous Remoaners (or Saboteurs) anyway and we’ve done away with all of them in Glorious England. What about Northern Ireland? Well, we don’t talk about that anymore… Oh, look isn’t the war with Spain going frightfully well for us. I used to holiday in Alicante, although it’s gone downhill a bit since then. On the plus side, I hear a lot of seaside lands has opened up for development.
I am, of course, wildly exaggerating here but nonetheless, we remain in a difficult position. The Labour Party has not been a strong opposition since Corbyn took over. Between the media attacks (who have largely been ignoring the Tories even after the electoral fraud allegations) and infighting, Labour doesn’t have much of a chance to regain ground lost by Milliband. Part of the problem is, and I’ll sound like a broken record to my friends, that First Past the Post is barely democratic. Once you have more than two parties, it is no longer necessary to appeal to as many people as possible. That’s how you end up with a majority government that only 36% of the population voted for. Both Labour and the Conservatives have benefited and suffered from this system but once in power have no incentive to change it. A sitting government only needs to motivate some of their own side and convince everyone else that there is no point voting for any other party, so they might as well stay at home. Politicians don’t actually want large turnouts, they want demotivated potential voters who don’t see the point in engaging with the system, just like factory bosses want workers who think it is pointless to complain about working conditions or wages.
Since I have been able to vote I have wholeheartedly believed that there was a chance for change, that there were options. Yes, some of those options and changes would not be the ones I would like, but they existed. This time I feel it is a forgone conclusion, power has been drained from the people through attrition and motivation is at an all-time low. I do not feel any vote I make will change things, not in FPTP anyway, and any choice I make will just be a different shade of the same thing. I have ranted long enough and haven’t even begun to touch on Northern Ireland and it’s collection of Electoral Pacts that are eroding the already thin illusion of democracy that we have in the North, but that’s a discussion for another time (and we have six weeks of this crap to put up with). All that being said, and to close on a hopeful note, there are enough unregistered voters in the UK who could really shake the system up and there are still 30 days left for them to become registered. So, who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised on the 9th June.
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