Only two thirds of Britons could be bothered to vote - elsewhere in the world voting can land you in jail

This Green and Surprisingly Pleasant Land has nothing but contempt for those who couldn't be bothered to vote

No one died following the British General Election nor was anyone thrown in jail as power peacefully passed from one party to another. We take such things for granted but this is hardly the case for most of the world’s population.

Lamentably, I have direct personal experience of what’s it like when free and fair elections are banned and have seen the persecution of brave citizens fighting for the right to vote.

Among them are people I have known for a long time who are festering in grim jails for the ‘crime’ of trying to win an election in Hong Kong. It’s not as if they were even trying to form a government because the markedly limited political system does not allow for that. But a win did offer the prospect of holding to account a government controlled by the Communist dictatorship in Beijing.

Hong Kong never had anything resembling a full blown democratic system but in the dying days of British colonial rule it was edging towards a rather modest version of democracy which inserted checks and balances on a non-elected government.

New political parties were formed, civil society associations blossomed and my, oh my, the popular response was massive. Beijing had promised and even signed a treaty with Britain which allowed these things to continue. The promise was sort of kept until the mass democracy protests of 2019 broke out and a local election that year saw the democrats sweeping the board despite confident predictions that the disruption of the protests would ensure a big win for the pro-Beijing parties.

As ever the autocrats in Beijing misjudged the mood of the people. The victorious democrats hoped to capitalise on their victory and laid plans for a pending Legislative Council election. The plans involved uniting their forces and letting the public decide who was to run office by holding primary elections.

The Chinese Communist Party understood what this meant as it is run on Leninist lines and fully appreciates the implications of political organisation. It knew that if the notoriously divided democrats could consolidate their support and allow the people to choose their leaders they would succeed in establishing a precedent for free and fair elections. So it moved swiftly to eliminate opposition.

The leaders of the democratic parties were rounded up and charged with subversion based on an alleged conspiracy to win an election. Hong Kong’s once much admired legal system has been degraded to the extent that anyone facing charges of this kind will be found guilty and receive eye wateringly long prison sentences.

In Britain anyone is free to stand for election and what politicians fear is voter apathy. Seeing the miserable level of turnout in this election it is clear that their fears were not without foundation.

This insouciance is depressing considering the enormous sacrifices made to achieve free and fair elections. And it demonstrates a worrisome lack of awareness of how hard it was to secure universal suffrage, let alone the liberties that are part and parcel of this system. British people were not handed these rights on a plate, they fought for them.

Hopefully Brits will not have to experience what happens when these rights are removed even though they are challenged by a rising tide of populism that despises liberty.

It is easy to be cynical about the state of British politics. And it is easy to mock the rinky dink way that elected government works. But there is something magical and slightly absurd about the transfer of governmental power. The loser is given literally hours to move out as the winner moves in to a modest flat above the office in Number 10 Downing Street. One is driven off to see the monarch to hand in his resignation, the other speeds along The Mall to get His Majesty’s invitation to form a government.

As Jeremy Hunt, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, put it after just about managing to hold onto his parliamentary seat, British people are “incredibly lucky” to live in a country where decisions are made “not by bombs or bullets”, but by people “peacefully placing crosses in boxes on bits of paper…we must never take that for granted”.

One group of people in Britain who are most definitely not taking the right to vote for granted are the new arrivals from Hong Kong. Many prioritised registering to vote as soon as they arrived because they fully understand the value of being able to do so. It’s telling how much losing something of value focuses the mind on what that value really means.