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Thursday 15 June 2017

Voting for bums

I voted for our sitting Tory candidate in the recent general election. Doing so went against the grain, but our MP seems to be a decent enough chap who does his best for the constituency. During the previous election he came to the door and seemed a little overawed by Sajid Javid who was also with him and did most of the talking.

During the run-up to the recent election I saw him walking the streets on his own and almost felt sorry for him. His is a thankless task from the look of it. I don’t think he’ll ever be a minister or see the inside of his party leader’s clique. 

As we know, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill were key people heading Theresa May’s clique, a pair of political advisers nobody actually elected because that’s how things are done in our post-democratic age. It is obvious that these two were almost certainly more powerful than anyone you or I voted for. Most of us voted for one of the bums on seats or some poor soul who didn’t even get that far.

We have known this forever, particularly since Tony Blair’s political machine swept all before it. Now Nick and Fiona have reminded us that voting for a party is much the same as voting for its leader. Or rather it is much the same as voting for the leader’s clique. Conservative and Labour leaders both have their cliques through which things are done. If your MP isn’t in the clique then he or she is merely one of the bums on Parliamentary seats, at least as far as the real power is concerned.

That being the case, not voting at all is an entirely understandable attitude. For most of us it cannot possibly make a difference to political outcomes. The leader’s clique is democratically inaccessible and voting for bums on seats merely perpetuates that reality.

5 comments:

Sackerson said...

Water on stone.

CherryPie said...

When you can't vote for a party because none of them represent us the only option is to vote for a candidate that most represents your views.

I the candidate is principled they will represent your views even if it goes against the party line.

wiggiatlarge said...

Cherrie, I agree about the principled candidate, problem is finding one.

In our constituency where the Tory is a shoe in all we got to go on was three leaflets from the major parties telling us what they always do and failing to carry out, they were invisible in person and I would not vote and didn't for any of them, what a state democracy has become.
And with more and more placemen being foisted on constituences who have never lived in the area the bums on seats just got bigger.

James Higham said...

It was the dilemma this time around.

A K Haart said...

Sackers - slow though.

Cherry and Wiggia - I'm with Wiggia, the problem is finding a principled candidate.

James - it was. Not satisfactory.