Election reflection….

Democracy is much misunderstood both by its practitioners and critics. It is undermined by its more autocratically inclined opponents, and occasionally by those who should know better (whose narrow interest is that some of us who can vote, don’t vote). It is routinely taken for granted by those of us who have the privilege of participating in it as evidenced by generally relatively low turnouts here in even general elections in the UK and in the US. Democracy is often an aspiration of those who are never asked who should hold power over them, and it is more valued by those who have only recently come to experience it (as evidenced by the long queues in the recent South African election). It is often messy, it necessitates compromises (either within or between groupings and parties), and it is often peppered with hypocrisy and dissembling (and occasionally flat-out lying).

It was Churchill, speaking in 1947 in the Commons in a debate about amending the 1911 Parliament Act, who said: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…”. This is the bit of the quotation that is familiar. But he continued “..there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” That “broad feeling” remains strong more than 75 years later, long after the demise of both Churchill and his original audience. Funnily enough, in the current UK election campaign, it is the leader of the Labour opposition who has seemed more in tune with Churchill on this score than his supposed political heirs and successors, talking about putting public service at the heart of politics. After a long periods in power politicians (on both ends of the political spectrum) seem to forget they are the peoples’ servants. So it is to Sir Keir Starmer’s credit that in the final stages of the election campaign he has put service at the centre of his philosophy for government. Time will tell if he is sincere and strong enough to resist the temptations of political pragmatism and competing agendas. But if it turns out to be just another sound-bite, another ruse to attract votes, he’ll have to face us all again in a few years. That’s the beauty of elections. They provide a reality check, a sort of political gravity. It can be ignored for shortish periods, but eventually it exerts itself usually followed by the thump of former high flyers impacting terra firma.

So we duly wandered round to our polling station this afternoon, to put a simple pencil “x” against a particular name. An election is always a great leveller. MPs and ministers stopped being that when the election was called. The power drained away from them and flowed to us. So they were in effect brought back to our level. The power has lain in our hands over the weeks of the campaign. But elections also remind all of us that we are on the same level too. My vote counts as much as your vote, no more, no less. And our mass participation in the same simple act for us all (with the single exception that we may put our crosses in different boxes), reminds us of the broader community to which we belong and contribute and for which we are jointly responsible. It doesn’t matter our occupation (or whether we have none), our age, social or ethnic background, bank balance, preferred TV channel or style of music. For one day we’re all the same, while also being different and diverse.

There’s one other thing that I’m very grateful for. There are real differences in the offers that the different parties have been making during the campaign. Most of those who align with those different parties do so precisely because there are sincerely held differences of view between them. I admit there will be those who will perhaps have more base motives, using their alignment strategically to advance their own interests. But I think that this remains a minority pursuit. And yet, by and large, the discussion of these real differences has remained within civil and civilised bounds. On the margins there may have been intimidation, and perhaps even threatened or actual violence. But this has been vanishingly rare. We should be grateful. I cast my vote this afternoon calmly and freely.

One other thing I’m fairly certain of: whoever loses this election will not be found protesting in Whitehall or Downing Street tomorrow morning, trying to whip their supporters into a frenzy with incoherent and unsubstantiated accusations of the election being stolen. Power will flow from the people, back to the politicians, probably quite a different group of politicians, relatively smoothly. We used to think that such transitions were just part of the normal democratic process. But of late we’ve learned that it is dangerous to take this for granted too. It turns out that it is more fragile than we thought. And as the change unfolds tonight and into tomorrow (and if the exit poll is to be believed it is a big change), we should breath a sigh of relief and be thankful. Thankful that somehow democracy, for all its faults and messiness, has worked again. Then we can all get back to the business of moaning about how horrible our political system is and arguing about which particular collection of incompetents are messing it up.

At least we will have had the privileged of putting them in the position of messing it up.