Rob the Gob

Today is not a good day. The country I live in has apparently distanced itself from tolerance, liberalism, progression and integration and embraced nationalism, reactionary isolationism and distrust. It has done this because the people who might have voted Labour were so disillusioned that they just didn’t vote at all. I watched the final results come in last night, mauled by it. Though I know this election does not truly represent anything but people’s disenchantment with Labour, and hope that the lack of any credible left-wing party has skewed the vote, it remains shameful that the British people are so appallingly apathetic that they’ll allow us to be represented by the BNP. I feel like I’ve just met up with an ex-girlfriend and found out that she’s dating Oswald Mosley.

The BNP are a pretty scary bunch. Chances are if you’re reading this, you already know that. The detail of their policies is truly horrifying. The campaign to protect the Christian faith against the ‘Islamisation’ of Britain (a position opposed by the very church they claim to support, incidentally) is scary enough by itself. ‘Voluntary repatriation’ sounds a lot like a precursor to ethnic cleansing. The reintroduction of corporal and capital punishment is, frankly, a return to a kind of barbarism no civilised man should crave. Their leader is an utterly despicable fascist. I could go on. That we now have two BNP MEP’s is a disgusting shame the entire country should feel. They got in, though, largely because of voter apathy, only picking up a few actual votes here and there. Despite the slight hysteria, I doubt if this is a slide towards a strictly fascist government. More worrying to me is the surge of support for UKIP.

John Stuart Mill said, ‘Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.’ You might think that only ignorant racists would vote for the BNP, or any far right movement. The simple solutions offered by the right appeal to those who don’t appreciate the complexities of situations and the far-reaching consequences of such policies, simply because they can understand them. Then there are those who, despite understanding perfectly well what the consequences of right-wing policies are, support them anyway. These people are usually motivated by personal gain, although such policies veritably sing out to those motivated by fear or hatred, and fear and hatred recognise no boundaries of education, class or intelligence. Do not think I’m merely talking about the BNP here. Fear of change and progression, and a desperate clinging to the values of a past that never existed is perhaps nowhere better represented than by UKIP. That they make reactionary nationalism palatable does not mean that they are to be identified with the racist BNP, but they are strong conservatives, they do represent the right, and their platform is informed by fear. Here is a summary of their policies I just lifted from their website, with my annotations in blue.

• UKIP will leave the political EU and trade globally and freely (do not think that this second part will happen automatically – this will require negotiation). We will re-embrace today’s fast-growing Commonwealth and we will encourage UK manufacturing so that we make things again. This, of course, is why most people vote for them. I don’t agree, but I can see why people might, given how much anti-EU bullshit is pumped into their heads by the British media. Interesting to see exactly how this works when you’re an MEP…
• We will freeze immigration for five years, speed up deportation of up to a million illegal immigrants by tripling the numbers engaged in deportations, and have ‘no home no visa’ work permits to ease the housing crisis. Reactionary right-wing policies for people who fear foreigners and want to blame them for everything. The nationalists will shake your hand gladly thanks to this.
• We will have a grammar school in every town. A system that has always promoted elitism and reinforces class divisions. We will restore standards of education and improve skills training. Student grants will replace student loans. Interesting to see how that’s funded. One way would be to cut numbers – perhaps only those who went to grammar, public or private school will go to university. Like in the 1930’s.
• We will radically reform the working of the NHS with an Insurance Fund, whilst upholding the ‘free at the point of care’ principles. I’m not sure how that would work – and neither are they, as it happens. We will bring back matrons (token) and have locally run (token), clean (every single person wants this) hospitals.
• We will give people the vote on policing priorities, go back to proper beat policing and scrap the Human Rights Act. Whoah… hold on one moment… SCRAP THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT? Fucking hell… Moving on… We will have sentences that mean what they say. So – to summarise, policing informed by whatever people are most afraid of, draconian heavy sentencing, and no human rights. What a horrid place to live that would be.
• We will take 4.5 million people out of tax with a simple Flat Tax (with National Insurance) starting at £10,000. Which would benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. We will scrap Inheritance Tax, not just reform it and cut corporation taxes. Further benefiting the rich.
• We will say No to green taxes and wind farms. Why? Not taking climate change seriously is inviting disaster. Opposing wind farms is ridiculous. To avert a major energy crisis, we will go for new nuclear power plants on the same existing site facilities (that won’t be enough) and for clean coal (a temporary solution at best). We will reduce pollution How? and encourage recycling (we’ve been ‘encouraging’ this for as long as I can remember).
• We will make welfare simpler and fairer, introduce ‘workfare’ to get people back to work, and a new citizens pension and private pensions scheme insurance. I’d have to see the details on this before commenting, but I have no problem with it in principle. That’s one so far, with reservations.
• We will support our armed forces with more spending on equipment, military homes and medical care. Ok, but where’s this heading… We will save our threatened warships and add 25,000 more troops. Why? Do we want to deploy more troops? Declare war on somebody? How are we going to pay for this? This stinks of the worst kind of mindless national pride.
• We will be fair to England, with an English Parliament of English MPs at Westminster. So, UKIP, are we going to have a UK parliament? We will replace assembly members like MSPs with MPs. Presumably, then, UKIP is actually in favour of dissolving the UK. Interesting. And we will promote referenda at local and national levels. Thereby reconnecting democracy with mob rule.
• We will make customer satisfaction number one for rail firms – not cost cutting (hold on, does that mean rail fares will go up?) and will look seriously at reopening some rail lines that Beeching closed. Wow… I actually like that last bit. Bloody expensive, though. We will make foreign lorries pay for British roads with a ‘Britdisc’ (thereby making all imports more expensive, which will damage business – I don’t have a problem with this especially, but I think they haven’t really thought it through) – and we will stop persecuting motorists (despite the fact that we need the tax revenues form fuel duty, it is completely justifiable on the basis of our irresponsible and selfish impact on the environment, and the fuel’s running out…)
• Last, but never least, we will bring in fair prices and fair competition for our suffering farmers, (this is highly debatable, but I’ll let it pass, because here we go…) and restore traditional British fishing and territorial waters. Do you know why we have fishing quotas? Because if we didn’t do that, there would be no fish left, you idiots! Fishing quotas are already way above sustainable levels. That’s why we get a lot of our fish from many, many miles away. As to ‘territorial waters’, what are you going to do, park your shiny warships around the edge?

What you have there is a big pile of naïve policies designed to do nothing but appeal to the grumpy, simplistic right. Jeremy Clarkson’s Britain. That we’ve sent a load of people representing this dross to Europe is embarrassing.

The whole of Europe has swung to the right. Romania, Hungary and the Netherlands have all returned at least one candidate standing on an anti-immigration platform. Despite the economic crises, the left has failed to gain ground on the centre-right governments throughout the continent. Some will always cling through loyalty, but that left-wing parties can’t seize votes in a time when the right-wing economic policies (yep, New Labour has these) have clearly crippled world finances show us something else. It is, I think, that simplistic, right-wing solutions are a ‘run home to mummy’ position. It’s what people cling to when they’re afraid – even though the very approaches that these parties take caused the problems. People have been made so avaricious that they would rather grasp to protect what they have than admit that their approach was mistaken.

This tendency, however, is not definitional of all people. The problem is that those who would be brave in the face of difficult conditions have lost their focus. Some people will cling to simple, right-wing fear and hatred solutions in times of crisis, others traditionally vote for solidarity, freedom from oppression and cooperation. Yet the results are skewed to the right this time because the focus of political apathy has fallen to the left. Like a felled giant redwood. Turnouts throughout Europe were at a record low. The centre-right has edged even further ahead, but the collapse of the left’s vote is largely responsible for the huge apparent surge in right-wing parties. It is, perhaps, telling of just how unpalatable Cameron and his cronies are that even in a time when the Labour Party is disintegrating like a month-old flan, they cannot pick up a significantly larger number of votes. He struts about like a prep-school bully poking at a stumbling tramp for the amusement of his friends. But this is no great victory, its schadenfreude at best – the Tory party has picked up hardly a vote, and has won by default. And this is the danger. Whilst the good look on passively, those who can still motivate their voter-base will slip into control despite hardly attracting anyone new to their cause. The Greens have made some gains, but it is hardly a consolation.

And this is the problem. We need a new political movement, we need somebody viable on the left. It seems increasingly unlikely that this will emerge from existing party structures in this country. Labour have won the last couple of elections primarily because we feared the alternatives. Well, last night we proved that right, but I had hardly advocated voting for them on that basis. Because we fear a truly bad government is a reason, but not a good one, to vote for a crap one. If you are going to solve the problems of voter apathy, you need better motivation than that. Many people have said that we need an Obama, (in fact, one of my friends said to me that once the Americans are done with him, it might be nice if we could borrow him for a while. To be frank, if that fascist shit-golem Nick Griffin is the alternative, I’d happily declare this the 51^st state right now). Perhaps we do, but we only stand a chance of this there is more involvement with politics from the left. We have a focus for the worst tendencies of British culture – our tendency for arrogant nationalism, our stubborn conservativism, our protectionist natures, our isolationist tendencies, our xenophobia, our anger, aggression, and our fear. We need to find a group of people who represent the best things about Britain – our liberal heritage, our progressive tendencies, our tolerance and inclusiveness, our inventiveness, our willingness to explore new possibilities, our sense of fairness and our bravery. We need this soon.

I can tell you now, I am not staying here if last night is where we are heading.