You may have noticed that there hasn't been a lot of comment on Grumpy Old Sod about the 2010 parliamentary election. This is mainly because we are well aware that other people are writing about it with far more depth and perception than we could manage, so there doesn't seem much point.
Of course we have written many times in the past about the fact that our current electoral system is absurd and means there is no way we can describe ourselves as living in a democracy. We don't. Quite the opposite, in fact – we live in a country where the will of the people is the last thing any politician needs to worry about.
Look at the figures ...
1945 Labour (Attlee) won with 47.7% of the vote
1950 Labour (Attlee) won with 46.1% of the vote
1951 Conservatives (Churchill) won with 48% of the vote
1955 Conservatives (Eden) won with 49.6% of the vote
1959 Conservatives (Macmillan) won with 49.4% of the vote
1964 Labour (Wilson) won with 44.1% of the vote
1966 Labour (Wilson) won with 47.9% of the vote
1970 Conservatives (Heath) won with 46.4% of the vote
February 1974 Labour (Wilson) won with 37.2% of the vote
October 1974 Labour (Wilson) won with 39.3% of the vote
1979 Conservatives (Thatcher) won with 43.9% of the vote
1983 Conservatives (Thatcher) won with 42.4% of the vote
1987 Conservatives (Thatcher) won with 42.2% of the vote
1992 Conservatives (Major) won with 41.9% of the vote
1997 Labour (Blair) won with 43.2% of the vote
2001 Labour (Blair) won with 40.7% of the vote
2005 Labour (Blair) won with 35.3% of the vote
(In 1951 the Conservatives under Churchill won with 48% despite the fact that Labour won 48.8% of the vote but had 26 fewer seats. In February 1974 Labour under Wilson won with 37.2% of the vote against 37.8% for the Conservatives who nevertheless had 4 fewer seats).
In other words, in every single election since WW2 the majority of the electorate voted against the party that actually won. In what way is this democratic?
But this isn't what worries us.
What worries us is that there has been more public interest in this 2010 election than we can ever remember. Already politicians from all parties are voicing the idea that our electoral system needs overhauling, and it seems entirely possible that the LibDems' call for proportional representation might actually come to fruition some time soon. In itself this would be no bad thing, of course. But the idea that political parties might begin to take notice of public opinion is highly dangerous, because it will mean that they'll start to do stuff, and that's the last thing we need.
We have just experienced thirteen years of a government that really believed it was entitled to enact legislation to force people to live their lives in the way the government thought they should – social engineering, it has been called. In an unprecedented plethora of new laws, politicians have genuinely believed that it was their right to make us recycle, to cut our “carbon” emissions, to drive our cars in the way they wanted us to, to adopt or abandon the marriage customs they thought would be good for us. They appear to have deliberately manipulated immigration to their own ends. They have given away our rights as a nation to bureaucrats in Brussels.
They have interfered in our family lives, told us how to discipline our children, relieved us of the right to defend ourselves against attack and theft, placed limits on the free expression of personal opinion, tinkered with our attitudes to religion, restricted what we can take with us when we fly on holiday, interfered with our humour, lectured us through the captive media to make us believe in global warming, indoctrinated our children about homosexuality, race and the environment, and created specially favoured minority groups with rights to grab land and receive benefits that are not enjoyed by the bulk of the population.
In order to carry out their agenda of creating their own vision of a neo-socialist utopia they have spied on us in the streets and on the internet, tagged and labelled us in national databases like a herd of cows, taken our fingerprints and DNA just in case we might ever decide to commit a crime in future, and photographed and recorded our movements on the roads. All for our own good, of course. They tell us that if we have done nothing wrong then we have nothing to fear, when in fact they've got us all looking fearfully over our shoulders precisely because we've done nothing wrong.
This is what happens when you have a government that believes it has the right to shape society. This is what happens when public servants forget that their job is to serve the public. This is what happens when “belief” enters politics. “Belief” is our enemy. “Belief” will destroy us.
And that's what worries us about all this sudden public interest in politics. It's not our fault – as more and more parliamentary abuses have come to light it was inevitable that we would perk up and start taking notice. But heaven forfend that our new government, whatever colour or complexion it may be, should decide that it's actually got to do things.
We've been there. It's damaged our society more than we know. What we need is a government that will keep quiet and do as little as possible. A few parliamentary expenses are a small price to pay, just so long as they LEAVE US ALONE.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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