Elections past and future .....

Elections are a crucial element in any democracy.

I was born in 1945 in The Lakes a private maternity home in Ashton under Lyne, four years later my sister was born in a National Health Service Maternity Unit.

The difference was an election. The Labour Party was elected and became the party of Government in 1945 against all expectations, the pundits got it wrong, because the public, exercised their votes because, clearly, they believed that a Labour Government would pursue a programme of social reform that would benefit the nation as a whole in those grim post war years.

Sadly, since then, there have only been a very limited number of Labour Governments the best of which in my view after Attlee was the Wilson Government which introduced the Open University and kept Britain out of Vietnam.

The Blair Government was a mixed success much of the benefits were driven by Gordon Brown as a fiercely independent Chancellor, including Sure Start, lifting thousands of children out of poverty and bringing a fairness to social security with amongst other things tax credits and the triple lock on pensions, but the Health Service is now paying a high price for PPI.

Which raises the challenging question of why the British public keeps electing Tory Governments that govern in the interests of share holders, their friends and those who fund them.

It seems to me that in the 77 years that have elapsed since 1945 much of what was achieved by that post-war Labour Government has been systematically rolled back and challenged by a Tory Party held to ransom by its right wing.

I keep a photograph of David Cameron and George Osborne in my downstairs loo. They share a self congratulatory smile about their achievements, privatising health, making austerity the key to a 'successful?' future, bombing Libya into Chaos, insulting the disabled (whilst parking in designated disabled spaces for their own convenience). They might be smiling but that is only because they don't realise that I am peeing on their shoes!

Unsurprisingly the recent elections for local councils has resulted in distinct losses for the Tories and distinct wins for Labour, the Liberals and the Greens. So there is a potential change ahead. The current Government is, like the Monty Python Parrot dead, nailed to its perch. They are 'dead men walking'. The  Prime Minister and Chancellor have been fined for breaking their own laws, Brexit is generally held to be a failure, the cost of living is out of control, children are now living in poverty again, the only 'success' that can be claimed is the 'success' of food banks which have grown exponentially.

After a lifetime of service, burning myself out in the service of the Lord as my College Principal described ministry, I am ashamed of the Government of the country of which I am a part, its treatment of refugees, its gerrymandering of the election system by demanding that electors carry some form of identification, its absolute disregard for truth and most recently its management of the pandemic.

Obviously during any mid term elections the governing party can expect a bloody nose but unless there is a serious attempt to address the imbalances of the first past the post system, my head tells me that my heart can wish for what it likes, the electorate will vote again for the Tories unless the voting system is shaped towards, better, fairer outcomes.

The Green Party, The Liberal Party (despite the University Fee Fiasco and Nick Clegg supping with the very devil) and The Labour Party should now campaign vigorously for a better, fairer voting system than first past the post.

As Polly Toynbee writes in todays Guardian:

So what should progressive “good chaps”, be they male or female, do at the close of a Johnson era? That much is clear. They should feel free to introduce a voting system that will stop any corrupt party with a minority of votes ever governing alone again with dictatorial powers.

Elections are a crucial in any democracy. The least we can expect is that they are free and fair.