Who won the 2024 general election? Well, obviously Labour won with 412 seats, but in fact they were outperformed by the I Didn’t Vote Party. The I Didn’t Vote Party supporters didn’t turn up and register their vote, went nowhere near a polling station, and had no difficulty with voter ID because not turning up to vote causes no issues over identity.
This time out it appears that about 40% of the electorate did not bother to vote. The figure of 59.8% on turnout was only exceeded in mediocrity by the turnout in the 2001 general election when only 59.4% of the electorate voted.
Reform Acts
We have suffered 14 years of austerity: Brexit, a housing crisis, an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis, Covid, hundreds of innocent Post Office sub-postmasters fitted up and convicted, a dreadful and avoidable fire at Grenfell Tower which killed 71 people, sewage in our seas and waterways, a dead economy, high interest rates and a pantomime circus of poorly performing prime ministers. Yet nearly half of the population did not register their disapproval or approval. What were they thinking?
I have been reading about the shenanigans over the 1867 Reform Act where there was resistance within parliament to widening the franchise. The 1832 Great Reform Act had swept away some of the most iniquitous practices such as ‘rotten boroughs’ where tiny numbers of voters, often under the control of a powerful landowner returned an MP. But expanding industrial towns like Birmingham had none or few MPs, yet still only one million men had the vote out of an expanding UK population of 16 million. The 1867 Act doubled this to two million men by reforming the property qualification but women were excluded.
It was not until five years later that secret ballots were introduced. It was 1918 before both men and women over 30 could vote and 1928 before women over 21 could vote. Over-18s of either sex were not granted the vote until 1969, only 55 years ago. Forget about The Magna Carta in 1215 or the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, this stuff is within living memory. And yet many people choose to ignore the efforts of our valiant ancestors to secure a universal franchise.
Universal suffrage
Back in 1867 those opposing reform, such as Robert Lowe MP, were saying that the working man was ignorant and could not be expected to come to a sound judgement on the issues of the day. W E Gladstone strove to nullify this reactionary self-interest, pointing out that you could not hold back the future (Reform Party please note). It was only because of Benjamin Disraeli’s hocus-pocus in the following government and a riot at Hyde Park that the statute was finally passed. With women it was a similar level of self-interest, myopia, and reactionary tendencies. People died to achieve universal suffrage, yet their sacrifice is either forgotten or ignored.
For those banging on about having a ‘patriotic’ curriculum, this is as patriotic as you can get, so where were they? Gladstone might as well have not bothered. I suspect that if he had known what people in the UK would do in the 21st century, he would have saved his breath, gone home and cut down another tree in frustration. (Tree felling was one of Gladstone’s hobbies, along with saving ‘fallen women’.) Perhaps the reactionaries were right all along.
My great grandmother was as literate and numerate as any today, even though her education was basic, so Lowe and his friends were somewhat mistaken. Despite being over 90 years old she voted in every election from 1918 util she died in the late 1960s.
Stand up and be counted
I have often railed at the loss of productivity, aspiration and hope that our educational system creates with its bias towards the middle class, especially in socially selected Kent. This case is not made easier by the doleful civic activity of many of the population. If politicians act in their own self-interest and ignore the ‘common people’, is it any wonder that they are tone deaf in some areas because people do not vote? Why should they care?
The worst turnout was 42% in Leeds South as reported by the BBC. This means that 58% of the population of Leeds South did not vote, yet they are not happy about the state of things in the constituency. I can see from the report a general sense of dissolution with the status quo, but it is not Victorian Britain 2.0 out there. Sometimes you must stand up to be counted and apply a measure of self-help.
Barriers
But perhaps I am being unjust. Perhaps there are barriers to voting. Certainly, the nonsensical ID requirement is both unnecessary and possibly designed, knowingly or unknowingly, to deter voter participation so that barrier should be removed without harming the authenticity of an election. Maybe we should be looking at voter registration as this may be difficult for those in rented or temporary accommodation who, due to circumstances beyond their control, are somewhat itinerant and face difficulties. If there are barriers, they ought to be tackled.
Maybe it’s our creaky first past the voting system that has delivered a majority for a minority, whose 33.8% of that 60% of potential votes scooped the pool. Perhaps a more direct correlation between votes cast and seats won might encourage better participation. Who knows?
Voter apathy
I think simple apathy is a root cause. Quite how we solve that without badgering and lecturing people is not clear. We often hear about rights, but responsibilities such as paying our taxes and voting are often viewed negatively, much to the nation’s detriment. Life is hard and there are those in society with very sharp elbows, whose aspirations and desires overreach those in places like Leeds South. Not voting will not improve fairness and increase levelling up.
That said, let’s consider this; power was transferred peacefully between one government and its successor. Rishi Sunak did not suggest that he had not lost the election, and he didn’t encourage scores of Conservative voters to attack the Houses of Parliament. Winners and losers did not resort to violence to resolve their differences during and after the election and voters were not impeded from voting (well, not by much).
There were few restrictions on becoming a candidate. Political parties were not banned, and free speech was not restricted. There are many countries across the world where fair and free elections are not a fact of life and having become a laughing stock over Brexit and lettuce prime ministers, the UK showed that it is in fact a stable place where progress continues unimpeded.
Use your right to vote
Autocracy and repression are on the rise, open democracy is fragile, and yet 40% of the UK electorate blithely ignore their precious birthright. I say to them you will rue the day, if ever the UK falls on evil days and becomes an autocracy. Freedom, and the right to have a say in how the nation is run is only guaranteed by an active and engaged citizenry and was hard-won. If you can vote on Strictly Come Dancing, Big Brother, Love Island and I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!, you can surely spend a few minutes every four to five years placing a cross on a ballot paper.
