The Death of Ideology

That's why I love blogging. You get to give blog entries grandiose titles.

It's not so far from the truth though. I've voted today. Confused, and with a head full of mush. The mush being the election leaflets that have poured through my letterbox. I stupidly sat down and read all of them. Even the BNP (British National Party) one. If I'd travelled down to Tower Hamlets and encountered the resident BNP councillor there, his cronies would have happily kicked three different shades of shit out of me (count 'em - Spanish, Afro-Carribean, Chinese). Four different shades, if you'd counted the Scottish.

I've watched Newsnight Scotland, with a dazed guppy expression on my face. Jack McConnell talks about law and order, and the new delight of happy slapper ASBO stickers stapled onto neds. Ain't that very authoritarian and right-wing? Meanwhile, Annabel Goldie extols the virtues of a school bus and how we should all use public transport like this, rather than driving a car and giving the kids a lift. Ain't that running contrary to individual freedom and private ownership that the Tories hold dear? Are all parties moving to the centre ground? No, they ain't.

It's about saying anything that sounds good and that will get people voting them all into power. It's nothing about the left moving rightwards, or the right moving leftwards. There's no idealogy anymore. It's a fucking crying shame.

As a lifelong Labour supporter (not New Labour), I'm at a loss as to who to vote for. And, no, I'm not voting for Solidarity or the Scottish Socialist Party. One is a vanity project for the leader. The other is stereotypical of left-wing politics - split into factions, in disarray and not knowing its left hand from its... um, other left hand. "We're the Judean Peoples Front!" "I thought we were the Popular Front?". Substitute: "We're the SSP!" "I thought we were Solidarity? Whatever happened to Solidarity?" "He's down there..." (pointing at Tommy Sheridan) SSP shout at him: "Splitter!".

I've voted SNP in the past. Not a bad idea for a disillusioned Labour supporter. The only reason I don't vote SNP anymore is when that fucking pile of horse's manure, the "Braveheart" movie was released, it brought out the SNP's militant wing. Having an even slightly English accent at college and Uni made you a target for being the cause of Glasgow's poverty or Edinburgh's burgeoning drug problem. I concede that the SNP is a different beast again, now that the much-respected Alex Salmond is back in the saddle. But I'm still mentally scarred by Weegees scoffing chips in my face, blaming me for their diet.

So, it's a toss between Lib Dems and the Greens. The Lib Dems were the only party not to be cheerleaders for the war in Iraq. As one party, they voted against it. They also still hold education policy as an important cornerstone of any decent society. However, they've somewhat brunted that appeal by reversing Charles Kennedy's original policy of earmarking 1p in income tax for schools and universities. I'm not sure the figures add up as well as they used to.

The Green Party is the one remaining bastion of idealogy. Namely, clinging vainly onto the idea of a community of people; where the community as a global identity intelligently recognise what's best for it and decide they don't want to destroy the planet with ludicrous amounts of CO2. Unfortunately, it's looking likely that the community of people are a bunch of selfish pricks, all complaining they can't go on holiday in their cheap transatlantic flights and can't drive around in their 4x4s to fetch the organic roast from the Farmers Market on Sunday. The Daily Mail perpetuates this with their "Hard-done-by motorists" weekly headline.

Heck, the choice now is obvious. I'll vote Green as my first choice. Partly because I recognise the planet is in trouble, but mainly because it'll piss off my individualistic hedonistic holiday-going, car-driving work colleagues and current project manager. I'll vote Lib Dem as my second choice, since they've consistently backed a strong education policy. I just hope they come to their senses about tax.

I was hoping that there were candidates for the Communist Party and Class War. I guess one has just given up completely and retired to Cuba, while the other lost his/her deposit. It's a pity as a work colleague of mine had convinced me to vote Communist with some of the most solid arguments that most of the politicians had missed.

Sorry, I forgot about the Tories. Um... what do they stand for again?

6 responses

I was working at the count at East Ayrshire, and so far the best one I heard was the "Publican Party" - one manifesto agenda, limited reducton of the smoking ban!

Democracy in action.

PS - I don't like to talk Politics (it's almost as bad as religion for starting fights) however, I'll wade in with an idea -

Scrap all party politics in local government elections. Councillors should be local (i.e district / neighbourhood) representatives. They shouldn't take insructions from anyone apart from their constituents.

M(S)Ps are a different matter - they need to take into account the welfare and benefit of the country as a whole, and should judge their actions accordingly.

PPS - Freeeeeeeedommmmm!

Blimey! Proper political debate on my forum. Thank you, Mr Shearer. Local government can be a bitch sometimes, particularly when you know the I.T. workers there are doing the electronic count. Isn't that all where it went wrong? ;-)

Yep, I sympathise. I remember feeling like such a cynic when the Scottish Parliament was formed... my friends seemed all excited & nationalistic and I was just dreading another tier of bureaucracy and another set of jobs for Jack McConnell and the WeegieLabour/MonklandsMafia cretins.

I'm feeling pretty chuffed today 'tho cos my friend Martha from the Green Party got elected to the council, and I've just seen the headline "Reid to resign as home secretary" :-D

I was personally gutted by the performance of the Greens - I thought they'd do better. It didn't even faintly amuse me when my car enthusiast work colleagues/knuckleheads decided to laugh at me (all of whom quote "The Global Warming Swindle" documentary - mainly because it's the ONLY documentary they've ever watched).

So, you've cheered me up by mentioning your friend Martha has got a council seat. I now seriously think the Green Party is the only party to 'get it right'.

As a post-script to your John Reid comment, I think I was the only person in the UK who was depressed when Blunkett quit. Not because I didn't want to see the back of him, but because he should've quit sooner over some genuine fuck ups he made in the Home Office. Practically everything that stupid man did blew up in his face, but he never quit over any of those. Instead, it was some stupid love affair. I utterly despise when a puritanical hypocritical Press make some public figure resign because of some private family issue, rather than poor performance in the job. Rant over.

Another point. I wasn't cynical about the Scottish Parliament when it opened and I'm still not, and that's for one very simple reason. It's got Proportional Representation. Every vote does count.

If this was a General Election (i.e. for the House of Commons based in London), I'd genuinely be stuck. First-past-the-post system renders a vote completely pointless if it's not for Labour, Lib Dems or Tories. I don't intend to vote for any of them during a General Election. Unless, by some miracle, Michael Meacher ends up becoming PM - I would vote Labour then!

Yeah, agreed about P.R. being a better system... my cynicism was just about all those constituencies where you could pin a Labour rosette on an ass and it would win (fill-in punchline about the numerous asses in Holyrood :) P.R. does improve that - gave us some Greens.

David Steel has talked about that depressing Labour-West clique too... 'twas interesting to hear it confirmed by the speaker of the Parliament.

re: Meacher, good that there are still some honest souls within the Labour party - more power to them and dudes like Walter Wolfgang.

P.S. neat idea Calumn - Community Councils are kindof toothless at the 'mo (many areas don't have 'em), so it would be like combining the non-political and local-interest aspect of Community Councillors with the power of a City Councillor... and getting rid of the party-political B.S. - I'd vote for that!