Election reaction part 2: still mad as hell

It took me six days to find a bright side to the election result. It may take longer than that for me to find something else to write about, mind, but I have at last stopped wandering around saying "that election result...jeeeez..." to every man, woman, child and pigeon that happens to cross my path.

In that six days, I felt a genuine sense of despair. A grey cloud, the nagging fear that the UK just got a little more selfish, a little colder, a little more unforgiving as a nation. It's been hard not to take the result incredibly personally - but maybe that's always the case when the party you vote for doesn't get in. I can't tell you how many times I Googled "how to start a political party" and "emigrate to Sweden" last weekend - my internet history suggested I was writing the next Nordic noir sensation, with a political slant. I couldn't keep away from the news, from Twitter, from the analysis, the think-pieces, the reaction articles. I positively wallowed in the doom and gloom.

Articles like this made me furious – and though I've calmed down considerably since I first read it, I still think it’s far too simplistic a response. To conclude that the reason a huge number of voters are incredibly upset by the election result is because they are merely bad losers is plain wrong. No-one is disputing that the Conservative party won fair and square. We absolutely believe that they were democratically elected – you can tell this because no-one is calling for a nation-wide recount of the ballot papers. We have the right to vote exactly how we choose, but we also have the right to ask questions. The right to freedom of expression. We have, in short, the right - and the reason - to be angry.

Why? 

Because at the very heart and roots of most anger lies fear – it's fear that’s been backed into a corner and brought to the boil – and there are plenty of reasons to be fearful. It is not as if the Conservatives don't have previous when it comes to instilling fear in people, unintentionally or otherwise. How many more times to we have to bring up benefit sanctions, food bank use, "anti-homeless" studs in city doorways, corporations being able to skip the "tax-paying" bit while the young, the poor and the vulnerable have crucial, life-saving support ripped out from under them? Forgive me, but I am still a little baffled as to how a vote for the Right can be anything other than an "I'm alright Jack, let's keep things the same" vote.

This thread has helped a bit - a lot of the responses refer to good local MPs, and voting for them, rather than ideologically. Which I can respect; it makes a lot more sense than "well, my parents voted Tory so I do too".

In a way though, this could be the best thing that’s happened to the Left. (I hesitate when using the terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ because most people don't think in those terms any more – at least not among the younger generations – but we don't really have any other words yet.)

Best case scenario: this could be the thing that moves people from online activism to real action. Sharing articles and signing petitions is great, but it's ignorable. You can't ignore several thousand people marching in the streets (well, you can try, as was shown last Saturday, but it comes out eventually). At least one person I know has joined the Electoral Reform Society as a direct result of the election. A number of good friends are planning on going on the People's Assembly End Austerity Now demo on 20th June (myself included). The test will be in maintaining that sense of urgency, that restlessness, that desire to bring about change, and sooner rather than later.

The 'Left' are perhaps always going to be at a slight disadvantage because real change involves stepping into the unknown. We can, in theory, go anywhere from here - it is, to quote Sara Bareilles, all uncharted.

I've said it before but it can withstand repeating - the people that have brought about real change in this world are the ones everyone else thought were mad to even try. The people who were, in short, way ahead of their time. I think the next two or three years might see a slightly angrier, more vociferous, more obviously politicized generation start to emerge. People will step out from behind their screens, having absorbed all the stories and information and other points of view that the internet has granted them access to, and will be all the more open-minded for it. And it will be them - well, us - who are the driving force for genuine change, fuelled by impatience, bored of waiting for the older generations to catch up.

It's not that we were bad losers, you see. We're just ahead of our time.

In the spirit of defiance and not backing down and whatnot, have this.

And I don't know if I've completely missed the boat with this track - the fact that I keep hearing it in Dorothy Perkins suggests, yes, I have indeed - but I am obsessed with this dark, sexy, mildly-threatening-in-the-best-possible-way little number.

This is not a selfish anger

God, it's been a strange day. Personally, I've wandered round in a headachey daze - when I wasn't in the office - unable to meet anyone's eye in town, because I know that over 20,000 people in the Horsham constituency voted Conservative. Of course, I knew Horsham was a safe Tory seat, but when you see the figures in black and white, you have to accept that the people who surround you in the leafy streets, in Boots, in Sainsbury's, have voted for another five years of... well, you know. It's an odd thing when your hometown becomes hostile, as @florencedora put it so excellently on Twitter when the exit polls were announced:

@gutter_flower I am so so baffled by that poll. Feels like the country just turned a bit sinister.

— Flo Holt (@florencedora) May 7, 2015

And Twitter was the place to be last night - if only for writer John Niven's timeline, who needs to be awarded the title of "Most Creative and Inventive Swearer in the Known Universe", and who did a tremendous job of articulating the collective sense of frustration and anger. It was reassuring, really, checking Twitter at intervals throughout the night - everyone was as confused and worried and angry as one another (I mean yes, it helps if everyone you follow agrees with you). Say what you like about social media; if it helps people feel less alone during dark times, I'm all for it.

And it has been a dark day, really. I don't know what I was expecting - a non-decision of some sort, I think; days of confusion followed by a coalition. The one thing I've been saying as the election campaigns have gathered steam is "another five years of a Conservative government genuinely scares me". It's been hard not to stop people on the street today, and grab their arms and say "do you know what you've done?"

Let me be clear - this is not a selfish anger. This is not the sore-loser sulking of people who voted for a party that didn't get in. We're all adults here, we can take losing. I am not worried for myself - I'm fine, I have a job and a supportive family; money coming in, friends, a stack of books to read. I'm worried for those who can't work, who do not have supportive families, who have physical and/or mental health problems that mean life is that little bit harder for them than it is for other people. For those who are currently unemployed, for young people who have not grown up with loving parents in warm homes, for all kinds of minorities. It feels like everyone who voted Conservative yesterday voted selfishly - "I've been OK for the last five years, and that's what matters". I understand that it's a human tendency to stick with the familiar when the alternatives seem like a gamble, but come on. Five more years of increasing food bank use, of benefit sanctions, of cuts to health services? Where's the compassion? As DB said, "how can you expect compassion from people who support a party whose very name means the opposite of progress?"

Scarier still is the rise of UKIP, who received over three million votes. Mind you, it does make you think - if that tweedy racist rabble can call themselves a political party and gain actual seats, surely we could start something at a kitchen table, based on kindness and good ideas and intelligence?

And I'm OK with seeing the Lib Dems become largely irrelevant. I hope it becomes an example to other parties - if you're going to u-turn so blatantly, then by God, you will pay.

There's three things we need to take from this. The first is this - can we agree, here and now, that if they try and dismantle the NHS completely, we kick up an almighty stink? We get revolutionary. If shit needs to burn to keep a national health service, so be it. It may currently cost the best part of a tenner for a prescription, but you don't have to pay to see a doctor in order to get it - for the love of the NHS, let's keep it that way.

Two - we need to remember this feeling. The anger and the disappointment - remember it. I have a wine-soaked, half-baked theory that it might, in a strange way, be good for us, like flossing. We will remember how it felt to not get what we hoped for, and use that feeling to motivate ourselves to always always always vote. And to encourage others to vote, and to tell our children to vote. We mustn't let how we feel today turn into apathy and disillusionment when we're forty. You know what changes when you sigh, sit back and huff, "ah well, nothing changes, they're all bastards anyway"? Nothing.

And three. The most important one. We must all be very, very kind, and much, much slower to judge. For the next few years, we're going to be governed by a party that has, time and time again, shown itself to be so very UNkind, UNcompassionate, UNcaring. We must make up for that. In spades. The next time you catch yourself thinking something judgmental about someone, just think "their life is different to mine. They had a different upbringing" and leave it at that.

I still believe that change is going to come. We’re just going to have to hang on a little longer than we thought.

 

But I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t say that it’s what happens in the meantime that worries me.


This track and its video fill me with joy. And this song - by the same artist - might cheer you for a few minutes.

The personal and the political

On the magnetic board above my desk, I have a column written by Caitlin Moran at the end of 2013, about "beliefs". (I'll link it here, but it's behind the Times paywall. Yes, I pay for it - I like the writers and as an aspiring writer myself*, I believe we should pay for content. Anyway, as you were.)

I re-read this column a lot - even though she's written far more emotion-driven, evocative pieces, this is the one I go back to, time and time again. It's a perfect example of a writer pointing out something that is so simple and obvious that when I first read it, I remember thinking "Oh God, yes! That is exactly the problem! How do we not see it?"

I'll quote some of it for context, otherwise whatever I go on to say will make even less sense than usual:

'But always, these revolutions - however many buildings burn, economies tank and people die during them - begin with a simple, ancient problem: two, or more, bunches of people who think they're right, arguing it out. Heat and shouting. Tribal loyalties. Your vote inherited from your father and your father's father ("We are of the left"; "The only way is right"). People bellowing, fists clenched, for decades at a time, over what they believe...'

'The system is no different across so many countries: it's basically people arguing that they're right, against other people who also believe they're right. This is how nations run things. On... feelings.'

'...what we need to do is stop talking about our political feelings and beliefs, like teenage girls on a sleepover, and find out, once and for all, what actually works.'

'...we "buy" our prime ministers and presidents and chancellors with less research and care than we buy an iPhone... I know which smartphone operating systems are most likely to work. I do not know which systems of economy or education or healthcare are. No one does. We all still vote, however.'

I didn't watch the leaders' debate on Thursday, because I had tickets to see Dylan Moran and I knew exactly where I'd be on the receiving end of more wisdom. I did watch Coalition this week - the Channel 4 drama about the aftermath of the general election in 2010, and "drama" though it was, the main thing I took from it was "Jesus, how is it that in 2015, we are still relying on a small group of middle/upper-class white men in suits, who all know each other from school, to do the nation's admin?"

How are we still at this point?! Is it not staggering that the last time we had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who'd actually studied Economics - which should surely be a minimum sodding requirement for that job - was in 1993? It's just... odd.  Strange that we've not made it past party politics yet. Bizarre that the people who know the systems - education, healthcare, legal - and who've worked in them for years, are not the people running them. A committee of headteachers - with decades of combined experience behind them - running our education system seems a much better fit than a lawyer, or a journalist. A group of experienced GPs, surgeons, nurses and psychiatrists consulting on how to run the NHS must surely be a better idea than getting a man who once failed to export marmalade to Japan to do it. A team of economists - from different schools of economic thought - hashing out how best to balance the books must be better than anyone we've had for the last 20-something years.

The popularity contest element doesn't help - journalists become ringmasters of the media circus surrounding general elections, asking useless things like: who do you like more? Who would you have a pint with? Who would you trust to babysit your toddler? It doesn't matter. I would definitely have a pint with Boris Johnson, but I run screaming from the idea of him running the country. (He's going to have a bash at some point, I'm sure, and people you consider to be halfway-sensible will be taken in by his ruffle-able hair and clueless-posh-boy shtick.)

I can't remember who I was talking to about 'never ever voting Conservative ever' - it could have been any number of people - but they said "all right, but can you really see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister?" As if I'd suggested Ross Kemp, or Keith Richards. I imagine - or hope - my reply was a rather shrill "yes, I can actually! Because all that matters is what Labour's policies are and whether they actually deliver, not whether Ed Miliband can look dignified while being photographed eating a sandwich. No-one looks dignified mid-mouthful - you should see me eat a pear. I go at it like a hungry spaniel."

It's no good sitting back with a sigh and going "yes, it's all very well talking about committees and things, but that's never going to happen, is it?" Change will come, I'm sure. I don't know when, but I don't think it's that far off - we will realise that we need more than what we've got. We need a better system. One that doesn't rely on inherited 'beliefs', foggy and instinctive; one that doesn't guarantee that those who are elected to lead are simply the smoothest speechmakers, the soundbite sweethearts, the photogenic buffoons. Maybe it will only be a matter of years, maybe it will be decades - but we will look back, one day, and wonder why it took us so long to ask for more.

*It's rather depressing to still be describing oneself as an "aspiring" anything at the age of 25. Blargh. 

On the Bambi bookshelf...*

 

*I'm trying to think of a name for this bit, seeing as I'm working on actually fulfilling one of my new year's resolutions, which was to read more. Suggestions less twee than this are more than welcome.

 Having finished Laurie Penny's Unspeakable Things - and I remain in awe of her prose skills and slightly irritated by her lack of facts and figures, I've moved on to the equally breezy and uplifting Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. It's not the ideal choice for a migraine-suffering, anxious hypochondriac, especially since the first two chapters are about aneurysms and brain tumours respectively, but it's edge-of-your-seat reading. Marsh is unflinchingly honest about his work - he doesn't shy away from admitting to mistakes and moments of arrogance, and he knows how to make the most of his subject matter.