RETREATING FROM POLITICS... ALMOST

I’ve just sent a letter to my MP about Assisted Dying.  I’ve also signed a petition asking for a debate in the Houses of Parliament on the same subject.  I wish I could say that I felt hopeful about being able to effect political change - I don’t, but I’d feel a lot worse doing nothing. 

It’s hard to describe the disappointment I feel watching the degradation of our country’s political life.  I am sometimes escalated into anger, sometimes swerved into anxiety, but mostly feel like I’m witnessing a not-very-slow-moving catastrophe rolling towards us.  I know this isn’t age-related: a lot of people are feeling the same.  But there is something poignant about getting to this age and seeing the good undone, the chancers and fraudsters lauded as saviours, and the opposition choosing their words so carefully that they say nothing of any substance but their attack lines.  

Enough of my ranting.

We are due a general election in the UK this year.  At the last election in 2019, 67.3% of the adult UK public voted, the highest constituency logging 81% and the lowest 49% (House of Commons Library data). The British Election Study found that 80% of over-65s but only 50% of 18-24 year olds voted in 2019.  Voting habits don’t necessarily mean political engagement of course, but perhaps are a guide to whether we trust the system or not.  I wonder whether those voting figures will stand up in another election, or whether older people (and younger people) will absent themselves, disillusioned by the whole sorry spectacle.  

I have always been an advocate for making the change you want to see and, for much of my life, that has seemed possible.  When younger, such ideals had a chance if you joined a movement, wrote enough letters, signed petitions, went on a ‘demo’.  There was a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when a march or a letter to an MP seemed to produce results:  women’s rights, gay rights, equal pay, anti-Vietnam War, anti-Nazi League campaigns all seemed to change society for the better. I’m not saying it made a perfect world, but it felt as though democracy worked.  I don’t remember feeling cynical, bitter, resigned back then - angry perhaps, but energised by the fight. 

One big turning point for me (and I think for others) was the Stop the War demonstration in February 2003, when an estimated three quarters of a million of us took to the streets of London, and many more millions demonstrated in cities across the world, to oppose Bush’s plans to attack Iraq.  The British PM (Labour) joined with the US and took military action anyway, the disastrous repercussions of which can still be felt today.  Since then, Brexit has confirmed my sense that most of the country, and certainly the political class, has turned away from the values I hold most dear - honesty, integrity, justice, compassion, equality of opportunity, non-materialism, support for public services - and, more frighteningly, that I can do nothing to stop the change.  I probably sound sanctimonious, idealistic, stupid.  I can’t find another way to express it. 

I do wonder, though, if some of my pessimism is age-related.  The average age of  MPs after the last election was 51, whilst in the House of Lords it is currently 71.  (No wonder I find myself relating more to what the Lords say!) I do remember my own parents as they got older, looking askance at the social changes being advocated by the young.  Politically and socially, older people get marginalised (unless there is a question about pensions) and perhaps this is appropriate.  It is the young who are going to be living with the decisions our government makes.  That doesn’t mean that older people shouldn’t stay engaged, use their knowledge of recent history to protest or support a position.  It just feels more difficult to do so when our voice isn’t going to count for much.

And then I look at Navalny and his wife, battling a totalitarian system for a country they loved.  When politicians here and in the US are afraid to speak out against their own party, with no fear of imprisonment or death but just an eye on their own careers, it makes me feel ashamed.   Similarly, I think of the suffragettes who gave up their lives for women to vote in this country: it means that I will vote, regardless, even though I want to write None of the Above. 

I also know I’m not a politician.  I admire those who can see the big picture and grapple with policy arguments that will affect everyone: I can’t.  I have a smaller brain and a smaller outlook.  But I want our politicians to be intelligent self-doubters, not narcissists. Political argument now seems so juvenile, so self-seeking …..more ranting. 

As an alternative, I wonder whether we should have a system based on the Jury Service - picking people at random from the Electoral Roll and asking them to serve in Parliament for a 5 year period, one year’s training given beforehand.  It can’t be worse than the system we’ve got.  Or, at the very least, Proportional Representation so that everyone feels that their vote counts.   I’d prefer politicians to stop thinking that it is only they who have the right answers and instead have to collaborate and talk to each other.

I haven’t disengaged completely.  I listen to The Rest is Politics, watch Channel 4 news, occasionally read the FT Weekend, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Spectator (trying to keep a balance).  I’m half way through Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge. On the whole, whatever way I try to educate myself, I am left with a sense of mistrust and contempt.   Political conversation without nuance, partisan and circular thinking intended for the media, leave me screaming inside. 

I note that the fertility rate has fallen to 1.49 children per woman in the UK (Feb 2024), the lowest since the 1930s.  I wonder if this represents a lack of hopefulness in future generations. 

If a malign force has been wanting to undermine faith in our parliamentary democracy, they have succeeded.  I fear we have lost our way.