Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Britain's Election: Welcome to No Choice Democracy

Finian Cunningham | 03.05.2010 14:22 | Analysis | Culture | Repression | World

British voters go to the polls on Thursday in a general election that promises to be historic – for all the wrong reasons.



British voters go to the polls on Thursday in a general election that promises to be historic – for all the wrong reasons.

Firstly, voter turnout threatens to hit a post-Second World War record low. Over the past six decades, the percentage of eligible Britons casting their vote has steadily fallen from 80-70 per cent to around 60 per cent. With public apathy and antipathy towards the three main political parties – the incumbent Labour government, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – running at all-time highs, there is a real prospect that the British general election of 2010 will see as many citizens forfeiting their democratic right as those turning out to vote.

Part of the collapse in democratic participation in Britain (as elsewhere) is due to growing public realization that the main parties are “out of touch” in terms of putting forward solutions to address the severe problems facing British society: mounting social misery, unemployment, poverty and debt, both individually and nationally. The budget deficit is estimated to be around £163 billion, which, some commentators say, puts Britain on a par with Greece in terms of its gravity.

This brings us to the second most notable characteristic of the 2010 British election: there is now patently no political choice on offer to voters. The putative essence of western-style parliamentary democracy is that “the people” exercise a choice in selecting a political party based on manifestos of differing ideas and policies.

From 1945-97, there was at least the semblance that the British Labour Party in particular represented the interests of the working and lower middle classes. But under the “reforming” leadership of Tony Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown, “New Labour” has become indistinguishable from the other main parties in terms of slavishly fawning over big business and the wealthy elite. Prior to the 1997 election, which brought Labour to government, one senior Conservative smugly noted that, in terms of economic policy, there was “not a cigarette paper between” the Thatcherite Tory Party and Blair’s New Labour.

That election, by the way, marked the post-Second World War slump in British voter participation, which now looks set to slump even further.

The facts on the ground tend to corroborate this morphing of British politics into a mainstream mulch of nothingness for ordinary people. The gap between rich and poor has widened over the past 13 years of Labour government, even surpassing the notoriously pro-wealthy previous 19 years of Conservative government. A recent Rich List compiled by the British Sunday Times found that Britain’s 1,000 super-rich saw their wealth increase by one-third – or £77 billion – to a total £334 billion during 2009 alone. Evidently, the only thing that a large chunk Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s £1,000 billion stimulus package achieved was stimulating the assets of the already wealthy.

All three main political parties have said that economic austerity is the necessary tough medicine to cure Britain’s sick fiscal condition. Despite the outrageous aggrandizement of wealth by a tiny elite, the wider public is being told that they will have to pay for the economic crisis through higher taxes and massive cuts in public services.

In an advertently shocking admission of the stranglehold on Britain’s politics, a Financial Times (26 April) front page headline read: “Brutal choices over British deficit”. Its report went on to say: “The next government will have to cut public sector pay, freeze benefits, slash jobs, abolish a range of welfare entitlements and take the axe to programmes such as school building and road maintenance.” In other words: you can vote, but it won’t make a difference – this is how the economy is going to be run as dictated by capital.

Ruled out from the outset, it seems, are imminently sensible and workable options, such as taxing the super-rich whose combined wealth is more than twice than of Britain’s budget deficit, or immediately ending budget-draining criminal wars of foreign occupation.

This “no choice democracy” is being foisted on ordinary people everywhere, from North America to Europe. It is the other side of the prescription of “economic structural adjustment” that for decades was the “tough medicine” that international capital forced poverty-stricken nations to swallow. The “choice” it seems is: you can hold your nose while swallowing this, or you may not hold your nose. The British non-election of 2010 marks the nadir in western so-called liberal democracy in which “we the people” have pointedly no choice in how our societies are to be run. Because we are all Third Worlders now. Bankrupt politics in hand with bankrupt economics.

One indirect benefit, however, could the widening realization among ordinary people – whether in Britain, the US, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Latvia etc – that a solution to the crisis in the capitalist political economy cannot be found in the present dead-end framework of mainstream parties.



* Finian Cunningham is a journalist and musician www.myspace.com/finiancunninghammusic

Finian Cunningham
- e-mail: finian.cunningham@gmail.com
- Homepage: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18948

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. unemployment — Brian B
  2. Whose responsibility? — MDN
  3. No consent to govern — Anarchist - a self employed person who works from home
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech