The Great Democracy Paradox

This Green and Surprisingly Pleasant Land ponders the success of systems where apathy reigns

One of the greatest political ironies is that the most successful political systems give rise to the most profound levels of apathy.

Political engagement is far more likely to occur when things go wrong or, more profoundly, when violent upheavals bring about change.

When everything is just tickety-boo people are less inclined to think about politics, and even less likely to get involved in the political process.

Seen through this prism the underwhelming response to the British general election can be viewed as a great success. Projections suggest that voter turnout will be lower than usual. Campaigning by all parties has singularly failed to fire up the populace, on the contrary it appears to have inspired a widespread mood of indifference.

It is very easy find members of the electorate, who proudly proclaim that there is no point in voting because all politicians are much the same, or even less encouragingly, that they are all as bad as each other.

Reasons for cynicism abound and yes, prefect political parties are as rare as the outbreak of sunshine in a British summer but this no excuse for the self-indulgence of insisting on perfection as an excuse for opting out of politics.

Besides which some people find voting to be truly exhausting, sometimes it means leaving your home on foot to head for the nearest scout hut/church/crumbling primary school or, in extremis, an abandoned store. Then you have to put a cross against the name of your chosen candidate. Unlike in North Korea where things are a lot simpler, you might even be confronted with a choice of several names, so there’s even more effort involved. Moreover these polling stations do not even provide a carrying service, so the voter is obliged to carry their own voting form and deposit it in a ballot box. Frankly, it’s a disgrace in this modern age. No wonder that most young people won’t touch this herculean task with a barge pole.

Compounding the practical problems is the fact that the ideological gap between the two main contenders for office has been mulching at a pace, thus adding to the general level of indifference.

When there is a push for greater differentiation it generally comes from the party on the losing side, where digging deeper into defeat never ceases to be popular. In this election it is the swivel-eyed members of the soon to be non-ruling Tory party who are keen for their leaders to  become as mad and bad as possible.

This is rather unfair to the Labour Party which has a long tradition of self-immolation and is being deprived of enjoying it by virtue of proximity to power under the leadership of the Quiet Man from Surrey whose father’s job is never mentioned (less than twenty times a day).

Flapping about on the sidelines is Britain’s Pound Shop Donald Trump with a pint in his hand and insistence that his foreign sounding name should be pronounced as in garage with an F so he can bang on about how foreigners are taking over the country.

It’s all good knock about stuff and possibly harmless as long as that Garage fellow can be confined to godforsaken Clacton where young people are treated with intense suspicion on grounds of their rarity.

Us Brits like a larf, don’t we. We even had a stand-up comedian with a fruity accent as Prime Minister for a while, not a very long while because his one-liners steadily became less amusing. Maybe this experience has dissuaded a push for more comedy or simply confined it to Clacton for the time being.

We comfort ourselves that the system will always right itself and spit out the most determined disrupters without the average citizen having to lift a finger.

I wish I could share this level of complacency but I have the experience of trapsing around the world to report on countries where liberty was extinguished by autocrats who seized upon the complacency of democratic systems in circumstances where citizens wrongly assumed that liberty could be defended without them having to do anything about it.

Time, then for an atheist to be unoriginal and make a quick visit to the bible where the most readable bits are in Psalms which says: ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’

So, get out and vote, you lazy bastards.