Cameron remains in Downing Street, now with a majority (having successfully cannibalized his former LibDem partners). A lot of people are understandably depressed by this, and now to top it all off Farage hasn’t even resigned. FFS politics, give us a break. We don’t have much say in what policies they try and force upon us – after all we had ‘Vote Tory for capitalism and austerity’ and ‘Vote Labour for the same, only a bit less and our heart isn’t really in it’. What we DO have a say in, is how we react to them.
Reaction One: Voter Apathy
Non voters are often accused of apathy, but if after going to the ballot on the 7th you are planning to sit back and do nothing for five years than you are being truly apathetic. Of course the same is true if ‘not voting’ is the sum total of…
Last night I answered a knock at the door of my flat. It was a tiny little woman with mousy, brown, strawlike hair, wearing round glasses, a long khaki anorak and what appeared to be clogs. She told me she was from the Green Party (what a shocker) and asked if I was going to vote for them on Thursday. After some awkward stuttering on my part, I told her that I was planning on spoiling my ballot. Stereotypical-Green-Party-Lady opened and closed her mouth like a confused goldfish before pushing some mini-manifestos into my hand with a timid ‘Well if you change your mind..’.
But is she right to be confused? As a left-leaning, liberal, artsy Drama student from a working class background, currently living in the European Green Capital 2015, shouldn’t I be voting Green tomorrow?
Well I’m not voting Green. Nor am I voting Labour, or in fact, anyone. On Thursday, I will proudly walk into the Congregational Church Hall on Newton Street and cross the whole ballot paper, scrawling ‘No Suitable Candidate’. You might, like the lovely Stereotypical-Green-Party-Lady, mutter ‘wow, radical’, or you might roll your eyes and pass this off as apathetic anarchist nonsense – but is it? Or is it that it’s the only sensible option when you’re offered a rainbow of all-too-similar parties to choose from, with none of them speaking to you or what you feel is best for the country?
I have no faith in the Greens; their social and environmental policies are hopeful, but I fear their numbers simply don’t add up, and I can’t help but shake the feeling that Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas would be like two aphids squeaking ‘No!’ into the blades of the whirring hedgetrimmers of transnational corporations. I don’t like Labour – for all the recent (and deserved, mind) sympathy and approval for Ed Miliband, I just don’t believe that his New New Labour are any different from the Diet Tories that Blair turned the party into. I don’t trust the Liberal Democrats, who ditched their heartfelt promises and their grounded, central political standing for the torturous right-wing agenda of the Tories. Speaking of whom, I despise the Conservative party – their use of wealth and status (along with the help of their buds; the media moguls, the corporations and the city bankers, who they really work for) to dictate that the rich should be richer and the poor poorer disgusts me. And like anyone with half a brain and an ounce of humanity, I loathe UKIP and the fact they have managed to convince swathes of the country that they are a ‘party of the people’, with their archaic and backwards policies that belong in the 1970s, and their odious, privately educated, ex-City banker leader who is as establishment as they come, somehow getting away with passing off as an everyman.
In addition to this, I’m unhappy with the way politics is treated as a whole. The Party Propaganda Broadcasts, misrepresenting fact and statistic. The abhorrent concept of ‘career politicians’. The fact that the political class are not representative of the nation in any shape or form. The evidence of public demand against an issue being vetoed by the government (have a read about TTIP if you’ve not heard of it) – by definition NOT a democracy. I could go on.
So what is to be done when I feel like this? (And rest assured it isn’t just me. Millions across the country surely feel this way, perhaps even some of you reading this.) Should I stay in bed all day tomorrow, abstain from voting, and become one of the vast percentage labelled as apathetics? Should I vote with what I think I should, according to my demographic? Should I do a questionnaire online and go off that? Absolutely not. A vote for any party means that the parties are reassured that this system is acceptable – and we know that it isn’t. There is an alternative; a spoilt ballot.
While it’s initially a confusing concept (Rick Edwards brilliantly explains it here), spoiling a ballot as a way of saying ‘No Suitable Candidate’ really does make a lot of sense. Spoilt ballots DO get counted, unlike individuals not turning up to vote, and each individual spoilt ballot, if done correctly, sends a clear message to the parties and the orchestrators of this outrageous political system that we need change, and that we demand to be listened to. It’s a defiant thing to do, and it will have unclear but exciting ramifications if enough people join this cause. And if nothing else, it’s a start. A step in the right direction – a rejection of the current political system, and real, actual change.
One of the more creative ways to spoil a ballot.
So I urge you, if you are considering not voting because you’re angry at them all or because you think they’re all lying bastards, or if you think they’re all reptoid aliens inhabiting human skins and brainwashing us, please consider joining the cause tomorrow.
I have been told that my desire to spoil my ballot come the 7th is a sign of apathy. But it is the opposite – it shows that I care enough to have actually thought about what I want for myself, those around me, and the entire country; that I care enough not to cross a box based on shoddy information spewed by slimy characters in this real-life political farce; that I care enough to make a constructive and powerful statement against the current state and system of politics.
As I look at the mini-manifestos that Stereotypical-Green-Party-Lady offloaded to me, I see that the front cover says ‘VOTE FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN’. Which is true, of course it is; but if they offer nothing for you to believe in, there’s no shame in voting for nothing. A ballot spoiled is not a ballot wasted.
Non voters are often accused of apathy, but if after going to the ballot on the 7th you are planning to sit back and do nothing for five years than you are being truly apathetic. Of course the same is true if ‘not voting’ is the sum total of…
Something from Anything 