Political apathy - classic or dud?

Blairism is the only thing that can keep the tories out of power. Blairism is itself horribly watered down socialism, pimping itself to industry, in thrall to the ideas of non-elected advisors and cronyism of the worst sort. I feel no enthusiam for blairism.

The people who want the tories back and the people who in their misguided stupidity think that the BNP's policies are a good idea obviously feel enthusiasm for their chosen horses, and will turn out at the polls.

I know this is self eveident stuff, I am concerned that the BNP will capitalize on the general listlessness and who-gives-a-fuck climate. But in all honestly I can't bring myself to cheer for labour. What is going to happen?

I should point out my sometime anger on this subject is directed more towards the "all politicians are the same" brigade. There's a major difference between genuine political apathy and total fucking ignorance.

to be honest i don't at all understand the claim that blairism has "no real policies" (just because you hate them or disapprove of them doesn't make them unreal) => it has a very CLEAR basic belief, that progressive social change cannot be brought abt by waging war on industry, and has pursued this fairly coherently (but its strategies to thisd end are yes, EXTREMELY alienating)

i think this belief is totally incorrect, but i don't believe that blair's opponents on the left have made the slightest effort to argue the point (outside learned lefty journals)... it's just all lame piffle and patronising rhetoric ("fat cats": use another cliche, or do you really think working class voters are so stupid they can only be TRIBALISED into yr ranks); you can be quite correct and still lose an argument, something the left seems not to notice it has been doing for about 30 years (or anyway 20 if you consider the Benn-Militant years a triumph of some kind, which I don't)

Don't mention it then!

Our local Lib Dem and Labour parties have been very active literature wise - mainly because I assume Islington is a very marginal council, with an awful lot of issues. I think the Lib Dems have done a pretty good job in charge over the last few years - having lived in and out of Islington for the last five years (and what with it being a huge mess).

Mark S is right - look at the locals in Hackney who ran as independents over their view on education. Problem is though that single issue politics do not lend themselves to things which are voted in every five years. You may be selected on your views on education - but what are your views on waste management etc.

Oh, and it bugs me when the media talk about voter apathy. Surely its non-voter apathy. (If there is no-one for you, vote and spoil it btw.)

Completely concur with mark s. If you don't feel any affinity whatsoever with the 'established' parties, and can't stomach the 'least-worst- option', form your own.

One other point. The postal ballot needed to be validated by an accompanying statement signed by the voter and witnessed by someone personally known to the voter. Not a problem for most people but are hermits and people with no friends now not allowed to vote?

(it is a cliche = it is nevertheless often still true)

Pete, i didn't know that about the spoiled votes. that's very interesting!

As I mentioned above our council is very marginal and it is often the concensus of the council chamber that will push things forward. There is a half decent case to be made that there is no room for party politics at a local level - for the difference it makes (not the same as saying all politicians are the same however).

(also there has been voter irregularity w.postal votes, as at the mayorals)

the socialist alliance leaflet was big on that aged SWP stand-by "the ordinary working-class voter", but someone at SA "headquarters" was not a dyed-inthe-wool Cliffite, so ordinary was written in scare quotes, viz "the 'ordinary' working-class voter" *sigh* get a fckin grip fellas...

Islington, my council, which I mentioned above, is no longer nearly hung - the Lib Dems made a massive gain of 11 seats giving them a 28 seat majority over Labour (from a previous majority of 2). Interesting compared to Hackney: Labour gained thirteen seats mainly off of the Lib Dems leaving them with a solid 35 seat majority over the Conservatives. Neighbouring boroughs with very different responses.

Britain’s racists have offered the British media "heartfelt thanks" for he "disproportionate attention and endless platforms" they provided to promote repulsive, inflammatory and totally unacceptable racist views.

One leading racist declared:

"Makes you proud to be English! The way middle class media dimwits paraded our knuckleheads and treated them like deep political thinkers - in the very same week they demonised the workers’ rights/social equality campaign of the TUC/anti-capitalists. Well done all of you! Well, all of you who aren't coloured or tainted with non-Aryan blood obviously."

He also thanked New Labour for talking up immigration and, indeed, creating it via their various bombing campaigns across the globe.

Alternately (seriously) if you seriously feel that there is a mainstream contingent of apathetic non-voters who would in fact vote for a type of candidate that isn't currently on the slate (i.e., "I am not a political minority, other people are the same way") the unglamorous world of local politics is the only arena in which to introduce these new conceptions, so get to it. I am, however, completely unconvinced by repeated claims that apathetic non-voters are actually completely reasonable people who would all vote for wonderful reasonable "good" candidates if only those nasty politicians would stop being so nasty and give them the opportunity.

of course you cd argue that's what the bnp are doing (but they're not, they're still playing the same kissing-babies game as everyone else, left right and middle, just for nastier ends) => a candidate presenting themselves as irredeemably unlikeable, and de-idealising their location and ideals, hardcore anti-spin

eg treat manufactured consensus politics and timid focus-group mediation as prog, and step in deliberately punky to all that

i just spent a whole evening in stupid args abt burnley: basically everyone in the room (inc.me) taking the line 'this is a wake-up call!! i told you so!! i was right all along", from 15 different and completely incompatible positions (inc.an activist from the "keep the pound" party, for fick's sake, who was only just diverted from her trademark tirade abt bloody proportional representation!!)

One of which was "I've been saying for years that the population of Burnley should be deprived of voting rights but no one would listen to me"

(Cast-iron way to prevent the pinefox ever voting again = Make Voting Easy: All Votes To Be Cast By Mobile Phone.)

Sounds terribly symptomatic of the times we are living in. The most obvious reasons ie economic problems, racial tensions, rising criminality etc don't always apply in places the extreme-right do well in eg Alsace (FN) , parts of Antwerp (Vlaams Blok), or the village of Worsthorne that now has a BNP councillor. So why are these voters receptive to neo-fascist white supremacists despite the best efforts of parts of the media to marginalise extreme- right parties? In my reading on the Front National, BNP and Vlaams Blok I'm struck by how frequently these parties play on fears of losing a national sense of identity (however spurious) in an increasingly globalised world economy. Their rabid xenophobia is but one element in a far broader critique of a process they see as undermining their perception of what it means to be French, Flemish, British etc. As such perhaps they are the far-right flip side of the anti- globalisation protestors. Only being organised into political parties (the Vlaams Blok and FN are very well oiled machines) their impact is greater. This 'critique', and the attendent nostalgia to a mythical past, can work as a powerful magnet in attracting disaffected voters across a broad range of issues: the EU, law and order, drugs, unemployment. Le Pen's campaign focused on other issues than immigration apparently. The very fact they are regarded as 'beyond the pale' by the established parties allows them to portray themselves as noble outsiders with clean hands. Marginalising, and exposing them for the vermin they are becomes doubly difficult. Lets not get too downhearted though. The NF scored some remarkable gains in local elections in the early '70s right across Britain (including places like Staines and Brighton). In Blackburn they even won 2 seats. All of which proved to be another false dawn for British neo-fascists, as I hope the results in Burnley will be.

the prop rep fanatic i mentioned upthread is convinced that if you changed the system of representation, you would suddenly uncover a giant huge silent majority for her teenytiny and rather ridiculous little anti-Europe party: this is nonsense; her party is not popular because it is foolish and nerdy and self-indulgently self-absorbed (it had a terrifically hilarious internal split at its AGM last year, where the members voted off a leading figure and he stalked out in a giant huff, taking most of the funding), not because it is Oppressed by the Man. She was also claiming that the BNP result therefore proved that a significant majority of the Brit white urban working classes were secret unregenerate active ship-em-home racists. Which it in fact doesn't.

I suspect what it proves it what everyone already knows: that really really passionate, dedicated, concentrated activism in a small number of wards can trump routine inertia and suspicion, and that the BNP's opponents in those wards were lazy, compromised and complacent (some local govt — from all parties — is also massively corrupt, but i have no idea abt burnley). (Also there's the collapse into irrelevant idiocy of official rightwing opposition party: the Tories really did NOT do well on Thursday. BNP is surely picking up voters there, voters aware that a Tory vote is currently a wasted vote...)

Idea that the BNP can also however overturn unattractive yet sometimes socially useful ingrained unimpressed Brit attitude of set-em-up-to-knock-em-down = unlikely (our flaws are our prophylaxis haha). They will not be voted for a second time unless they DELIVER in Burnley — which of course they cannot, being rubbish nazis (with just three seats, they can only deliver by compromising with the mainstream on ordinary institutional governmental practice = they too will be swallowed up lamb-slaughterwise, because tainted as a rebel-against-the-system vote). (Ditto Mr Hangus the Hartlepool Monkey and also Mayor Robocop, who I personally think is a much more sinister figure than N*ck Gr*ffin...)>

Anyway, even ignoring the ethics of it, the practical-economic-cultural args against repatriation and race-absed legisliation are extremely vast and self-evident — but it is rarely confronted in this mode, as if to argue empirically is to CEDE the moral argument. This makes no sense to me: I think FAILING to argue empirically cedes the empirical-practical argument: ie sets the argt in a mode where it's apparently ONLY "emotionalised" morality which stands against repatriation and race-based legislation, and not the massive and horrific (=socially impractical) disruption that would actually ensue (this allows Nazis to win the argt by "daring" to be "unemotionally" "rational", when of course actually they're nothing of the kind). Some of the liberal mediapanic = secret unspoken "Great&Good" fear-belief that the BNP are i. widely well-loved outside metropolitan chatterclass circles, and ii. correct, policy-wise, viz that TWAT mr Anthony "Third Way" Giddens on immigration => i'm not a fan of the guardian much at all, but just after the Le Pen result it gave Blunkett a tough and deserved editorial caning over his use of the word "swamping".

I absolutely cannot understand and explain how Labour improved their vote in Hackney.

This is a bizarre thing for a NZer to say because when NZ introduced a quasi-PR system there was a bugger-all increase in the number of voters.

eitan hersh:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/political-hobbyists-are-ruining-politics/605212/

Many college-educated people think they are deeply engaged in politics. They follow the news—reading articles like this one—and debate the latest developments on social media. They might sign an online petition or throw a $5 online donation at a presidential candidate. Mostly, they consume political information as a way of satisfying their own emotional and intellectual needs. These people are political hobbyists. What they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football.

...

In reality, political hobbyists have harmed American democracy and would do better by redirecting their political energy toward serving the material and emotional needs of their neighbors. People who have a personal stake in the outcome of politics often have a better understanding of how power can and should be exercised—not just at the polls, once every four years, but person to person, day in and day out.

^ correct, but it's a case of what you gonna do? they are deluded about the triviality of their engagement, but the alternative for most of them would not be diving into strenuous neighborhood activism, but some personal hobby, or another delusion that required equally minimal commitment.

yes people will go to great lengths to avoid meeting their real needs or those of the people around them