Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

6 May 2015

NONE OF THE ABOVE

With the UK parliamentary elections due to take place tomorrow 7 May 2015, today we respond to the question to which the entire UK electorate, the press and media, politicians and political pundits have been agog to know the answer for the past six months: how will Antigone1984 vote?

The key parties coveting power in these elections in England are the viciously rightwing Conservative “Tory” Party (currently the dominant party in a coalition government), the viciously rightwing Labour Party (which has promised the electorate that if it wins the election it will be at least as rightwing as the Conservatives), the viciously rightwing Liberal Democratic Party (currently the junior partner in the coalition government), the UK Independence Party (which, rightly, wants Britain to secede from the European Union but which, in other respects, is to the right of the Conservative Party) and the Green Party (which has a batch of humane policies but has failed to demonstrate that it will not sell out to the establishment, as green parties have consistently done in other countries, if ever it were to get a sniff at power).

In these circumstances, so far as assiduous readers of this blog are concerned, the long-awaited answer to the question of how Antigone1984 will vote tomorrow is a no-brainer.

It is “none of the above” – political shorthand for the decision by an elector to reject all parties on the ballot paper and to boycott the poll.

Antigone1984 does not support any of the parties mentioned above and so will not be taking part in the ballot.

The aim is to detract from the legitimacy of the outcome.

The larger the proportion of the electorate that abstains, the less legitimate the result of the election.

It is to be hoped that the percentage of abstentionists will be larger than the percentage of votes for any of the key parties mentioned above. Fingers crossed. If that turns out to be the case, it can be argued that the abstentionists have won the day, representing the largest body of opinion among the electorate.

If Antigone1984 were to have voted, we would have voted in England as that is where we are registered on the electoral roll. However, these elections are for the parliament of the United Kingdom (aka Britain), which also includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The key parties in the Province of Northern Ireland are the rightwing, historically reactionary Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the left-leaning republican Sinn Fein Party. Both parties are uneasy bedfellows in a coalition provincial government. If Antigone1984 had a vote in Northern Ireland, we would certainly not support the DUP but we are not certain that we would plump for Sinn Fein either given its violent past and a gut feeling that its leadership is devious and untrustworthy. We might well boycott the election as we are doing in England.

The key parties in Scotland are the left-leaning Scottish National Party (SNP), which currently dominates the Scottish regional parliament, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. In Scotland we would vote for the SNP, for which the polls are predicting a landslide victory.

In Wales the Conservative and Labour Parties are fighting it out together with the small leftwing nationalist party Plaid Cymru. In Wales we would vote for Plaid Cymru.

Antigone1984:

We have revealed above how we view the various parties contending for power in tomorrow’s election in the United Kingdom.

However, in line with our mission statement when this blog was launched in 2011, we want to make it crystal-clear that this is a personal view based on our experience of politics and our assessment of the current political situation in Britain today. In particular, we are not making any recommendations. In a democracy it is for each elector to make up their own mind on the basis of their own experience and their assessment of the political situation.

For our general view of politics in the west, readers who have not yet done so might usefully check out our blogpost of 20 July 2102 Partitocracy v. Democracy . This puts our view of tomorrow’s election in context. It may be summed up in the dictum: “If elections changed anything, they wouldn’t be allowed.” The post also gives our take on the political class. Generally speaking, in our view, public service is a euphemism for opportunism and self-seeking. Our countries are governed not by the best elements in society but by the worst. The scum of the earth is a phrase that comes immediately to mind.

We are also often asked why, as a leftwing blog, we will under no circumstances support the UK Labour Party. For the answer to this question we refer to our blogpost of 7 December 2013 “New comet or damp squib?”.

In that post we argued that for any genuine leftwing party to become a force to be reckoned with on the hustings, there is no alternative but to mount a full-on no-holds-barred attack on that wolf in sheep’s clothing – the Labour Party.

“We take the view that until the Labour Party is driven from the political stage the chances for socialism in this country are precisely nil.

The Labour Party has not been a socialist party since Keir Hardie died in 1915.

The Labour Party has ceased to be a progressive party since the Attlee Government fell in 1951.

For decades the Labour Party has been a rightwing conservative party with policies virtually indistinguishable from those of the Tories.

None the less, even as it slithers ceaselessly towards the right, the Labour Party is still seen – by many activists as well as by much wider a-political swathes of the population – as the sole possible channel for progressive politics in this country.

As long as the Labour Party can continue to exploit its historical reserve of leftish goodwill, it will hoodwink enough of our citizens to prevent any threat to the red-blooded capitalism that it now espouses.

In the teeth of decade upon decade of evidence to the contrary, it is an illusion to believe that the politically bankrupt principle-free Labour Party is, somehow or other, going to pull a socialist rabbit out of its capitalist hat. It is not going to happen.

That is why we believe that a key activity of any leftwing grouping today must be to mount against the Labour Party a full-spectrum all-out onslaught with the ultimate aim of driving it out of existence.

Only with the demise of the Labour Party – only then – will an opportunity arise for the development of progressive politics in this country.  Then and only then will it be possible to tap into the popular support that undoubtedly exists for the creation of a just and fair society in this our country.”

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012) 
5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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