To the British electorate: Congratulations!
Well done!
You must go down in history as the greatest bunch of ditheringly inept plonkers since Zafar the ditherer, and he was the last Mughal emperor of India.
Faced with two of the most corrupt and incompetent political parties ever to soil the chambers of Parliament; disillusioned with a political system that has favored peerage and title since its inception in 1295, the good citizens of the not-so-United Kingdom couldn’t decide what to do when it came to voting them out of office, so did what it always does at such times – it voted them back in again.
The two ‘major’ parties (who acquired that adjective solely because they keep telling the electorate they’re the only one’s to vote for) now find they’ve not enough seats to form a government, so must go a’courtin’ the ‘minor’ parties for a deal that will provide sufficient coalition politicians to form a working majority.
Had the populace voted with their brains, rather than their bone-head skulls, they could have flooded Parliament with minority party politicians and broken the Tory/Labour stranglehold on government once and for all.
The Lib Dems, Green Party, UKIP, and a host of other minority groups could have brought true representation to the British governing body by exerting pressure on the main parties to do what they’ve stubbornly refused to do, ever – change the system and adopt proportional voting representation.
In this election, the Tories won only 36% of the vote – barely a third, yet they secured 306 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, and are the party most likely to lead the next government. Labour won 258 seats, but on only 29% of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats secured 23% – nearly a quarter of all votes – yet hold merely 57 seats.
Do the maths – something is very wrong.
Coalition governments that are run on proportional representation, tend to work much more effectively than the self-styled majority governments of the larger parties. Many European countries function well with this system.
The British, along with their counterparts in the US, have been brainwashed into believing it’s a ‘terrible thing’ that will lead to economic and social disaster. The truth is, coalition governments make it harder for the corporate masters in charge to push through legislation good for themselves, but bad for the environment and the people, if minority parties without vested corporate interests can step in and block it.
The Liberal Democrats received a huge boost in popularity after the first televised ‘Leader’s Debate’, when Nick Clegg performed well. They were ahead of Labour and nipping at Tory frockcoats in most opinion polls. On the night, though, their new found friends deserted them for the ‘safer bet’, which was, as always, “…the party me Da’ an’ Granda’ voted fer…”
Sadly, one of those parties has sold “Da’ an’ Granda'” down the river since 1996, and the other still resides in the nineteenth century, when the Lord of the Manor ruled, peasants tugged their forelocks and gave up their daughters.
“Better the Devil you know, than the one you don’t know,” may be an old adage, but its meaning hasn’t changed over the years.
Apply it to politics, and you’ll always be beholden to the Devil.
Filed under: Same old, same old