On the day of the London mayoral election it seems apt to once again cite Douglas Adams, who wrote (apart perhaps from Crossman's Plato Today,) what is for me the definining comment on modern "democracy":
"Ford Prefect, of course, had an
explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop
frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say
other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage
which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed
this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the
robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very
slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
By which I mean to say...if you really believe that Boris is going to do for London the things you want done for London, vote for Boris. If you think Ken really represents your interests, by all means vote for Ken. But for god's sake don't vote for Ken just to keep Boris out, or vice-versa. Don't lend your - incredibly valuable - legitimacy to this process unless one of the candidates is really promising to do things you want them to do and is not merely in your view the least bad of a dreadful bunch.
Yes, you'll be pestered by people who think you're "wasting your vote". It's no waste to exercise the right to abstain. The very premise of a representative democracy is that collective action works. If we don't want any of them as mayor collective abstention is the right choice.
You'll be pestered by people who raise the spectre of the BNP getting in - a legitimate fear, and one that has prompted me, with a heavy heart, to cast a vote (at random) for one or another non-BNP candidates in past elections, but really doesn't arise today when they have no chance whatsoever of being elected. (The irony of those crazy baldheads of the BNP becoming the primary motivation for good people to participate in the democratic process strikes me as alternately delicious and horrifying. I sometimes wonder how long it will be before I come across an expose claiming that the three main parties have begun funding them just to keep voter turnout up.)
But I've read the manifestos. Like every political manifesto I've read in my life they boil down to the following message: "all of the other candidates plan to seize a portion of your income and squander it on some bullshit you don't want or need. In my infinite wisdom I plan to seize a portion of your income and squander it on this completely different bullshit you don't want or need instead." Somehow this position always fails to convince me.
If the only votes cast in London today are from people who really believe that their candidate will represent their genuine interests, rather than from people who merely want to keep the rest of them out, they'll get about five votes each. Here's hoping that today's the day we return a vote for none of the above.
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