Boycott the Election!

“Future” and “Change” are two words we hear bandied about a lot by people who would like us to vote for them in this election. But I have looked at their ideas of future and of change, and they are bogus, empty and counterfeit. They can be weighed, and found wanting. They are as a sounding brass, or tinkling cymbals. Because they have neither faith, hope, nor charity.

What they are really saying to us is “please be stupid enough to vote us in on a pretext, so we can have five years of power.” Five more years of the same, even if someone different gets in.

None of them has any vision. None of them has any ideas. The best they can come up with is “vote for me because I am not him”, leavened with a few veiled references calculated to appeal to deep seated prejudices and entrenched positions (of all sorts) and in some cases, garnished with xenophobia.

What a choice lies before us in this election! What a choice!

I am reminded of that old 1960’s pacifist slogan “Supposing they gave a war, and no-one came?”

I find myself thinking “Supposing they gave an election, and no one came?” And a dangerous idea has begun to form in my mind. In the past, I have always dragged myself out and voted, because of the respect I have for the democratic tradition, and for the people who died so that I would be able to live under a free democracy and not, for instance, a Nazi dictatorship.

But respect has to be earned. And it should be mutual. It is quite clear that the political classes, of all colours, have no respect whatsoever for the people who put them there. No sense of thanks, no sense of obligation.

So, I am wondering if, in the absence of anyone who can carry our great country forward, in the absence of anyone with the necessary bravery to say THIS must be done, and the will to carry it through, whatever the media thinks, then maybe we should just either boycott the election altogether, or write across our ballot papers “think again!” None of the above.

In some circumstances, not voting, or refusing to vote, can be a deeply political act, provided it is done for the right reasons.

Of course, even if many millions of people did either spoil their ballot papers or boycott the election, there would still be a result. There would still be a government. But it could hardly claim, as governments have done in the past, to have a mandate of any description. If we boycotted them properly, they would be hamstrung from day one. They would have to go away and think again. Think of some better ideas, and come back to present them at a REAL election.

They would have to go away and re-think the ideas of “future” and “change” until they came up with something that WAS radically different.

Something fundamental. We are not in Kansas anymore. Capitalism has broken, and socialism has never been allowed to fill the gap. We need a completely NEW landscape. Something different.

A massive boycott of the election, a low turnout of seismic proportions, combined with a comparative “Everest” of spoilt ballots from those who do turn out, would surely send them the signal, all of them, all of the parties, that their ideas, their policies, their proposals, are limp, shrunken, dead and moribund. They need to go away, and think again.

Think of how they could change the landscape for the people of Britain.

Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Treat the sick. Teach the Children. Cherish the animals. End the Wars. Punish the Guilty. Fulfil the spirit.
It is not rocket science. All that is lacking is the political will.
And every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked straight and the rough places plain: the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

Don’t do it for your sake. Don’t do it for my sake. Do it for the sake of those who will be the victims of this election, otherwise. Do it for all of us, Do it for Britain, for the people who are crying out for a change from the same old same old… Do it for their sake.

Do it for their sake. Do it for God’s sake, and for God’s sake, do it on May 6th!