None of the Above

Rick Edwards

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781471149320
• eBook ISBN: 9781471149337
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Are all the parties the same?Will my vote really make any difference?Why is politics so hard to understand?If you've ever thought any of these things, you're not alone. What with broken promises, complicated jargon and a lack of simple and clear information, is it any wonder that voter turnout is plummeting? It's not that you don't care about the way the country is run - it's that you don't think you can change it. Well, you can. And this book aims to show you how, by setting out basic politics and answering questions we've all asked, like: Why do politicians lie? What do UKIP stand for? And what's going to happen to the NHS?You have a decision to make in the countdown to the May 2015 General Election. You have something politicians want. Your vote. An ambassador for #SwingtheVoteand the presenter of Free Speech, Rick Edwards has written a pithy and succinct book explaining the power of your vote. A refreshing counterpoint to Russell Brand's sentiments on voting in his latest book, Revolution, it will make you think about politics in a completely new way.

1. Voting Why should we vote?

Your vote is your voice. Without a vote, you’re silent, and you will be ignored. I’ll expand on this some more because this is a book, not a slogan, but everything comes back to that simple point. Your vote is your voice.

Perhaps being ignored isn’t so bad. It’s not like it makes a difference to your lives anyway, right? Well, I’m afraid it does. For years now, there has been a steady and worrying decline in the number of young people voting. So young people have less of a voice. At the last general election in 2010, 76 per cent of over-65s voted, while only 44 per cent aged 18–24 did. This unequal turnout gives older voters a much greater influence on elections. Research has found that the UK has one of the largest differences in voter turnout between young and old people in the whole of Europe. That’s an embarrassment. What’s more, as young voter numbers dwindle, so too does the incentive for politicians to care about the issues most relevant to them. That’s the thing that hurts. The government looks after the people that vote for it. So while pensioners get triple-locked pensions (basically, pensions that will go up with the cost of living, at least), young people get trebled tuition fees. And guess who is paying for all of those pensions for all those old people? Weirdly, it’ll be young people. Because that’s how our pension system works.

It’s also young people who have been most affected by the evil combination of falling real wages (wages going up less quickly than living costs) and rising costs of essential goods. A study by the excellent Intergenerational Foundation has shown that the average weekly wages of workers aged 18–21 have fallen by nearly 20 per cent in real terms since 1997. Whereas workers in their fifties have seen their wages increase by 25 per cent over the same period. Public-spending cuts have hit young people the hardest too. A study has shown that, since 2010, in real, cash terms, over-55s are on average about £1,300 worse off because of the cuts, while 16–20-year-olds are £2,800 worse off. It really is that simple. On top of that, young people can’t afford to buy homes because there aren’t enough and the ones that are available are too damn expensive.

It feels as if an entire generation is choosing not to exert any influence over who gets to run our country, and therefore how they run it. The whole point of a democracy is that we get to collectively decide on the things that matter to us. We cannot do that if we don’t vote. And for all our complaints about the system, we have to accept that if we don’t participate in elections, we can’t change anything. And we will get hit the hardest.

The number of young people volunteering in their local area and getting involved with campaigns and causes has never been greater. So as I said in the introduction, the low voter turnout is not down to apathy. Young people care about stuff. It’s just that the link needs to be made between that stuff and politics. Because politics affects everything. What I hope to show you in these pages is not just what is happening in this country on a big scale, but also how the government’s decisions and the policies of the parties affect our day-today lives; our jobs, our health and our families.

Obviously I would say this, but I think it’s a really exciting time to be voting. It feels like the days of there only being two (or two-and-a-half) parties we can realistically vote for – Labour or Conservative (and maybe Liberal Democrats) – are over. Their dominance is slipping and the so-called minor parties are making up ground. Lots of people still maintain that voting for one of the minor parties is a wasted vote. I feel like even the term itself, ‘wasted votes’, is putting young people off voting. It just sounds so… pointless. These minor or ‘fringe’ parties, whether they’re on the left or the right of the political spectrum, provide more choice. And choice is a good thing. The ‘wasted vote’ argument goes like this – if you vote for a minor party, you will be dividing the opposition. So let’s say in a particular seat it is close between the Conservatives and Labour. The Conservatives would say that if you vote for UKIP, that will be taking votes from them, and you’ll end up with a Labour victory. Labour would say that if you vote Green in that seat, you’ll be taking votes from them, and you’ll end up with a Conservative victory.

That may be true, but other people will say that this attitude is self-fulfilling and defeatist. By definition, if large numbers vote for a minor party, then they are no longer a minor party. That’s exactly what has happened – the electorate have created a change. In 2010, the Lib Dems were the most prominent of those minor parties. This time who knows who it will be (polling suggests UKIP). This is, in the words of Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, ‘really healthy for politics’.

I was genuinely thrilled when I saw a poll recently where people were asked ‘Would you vote for this party if you thought they had a chance of winning in your constituency?’ The results were fascinating. Labour and the Conservatives were tied at about 35 per cent, which is not far off where they poll generally. Then it was the Greens with 26 per cent, UKIP with 24 per cent and the Lib Dems with 16 per cent. The Greens on 26 per cent is extraordinary because in the standard polls (which ask ‘Who are you actually going to vote for?’) they had been scoring around 7 per cent. What is holding the Greens back is that people don’t think they stand a chance of winning seats. Because ‘they can’t win’. Well, maybe they could. If all of that 26 per cent just put aside tactical voting, protest voting, not voting because there’s ‘no point’ and voting out of habit – basically if those people put aside voting for any reason other than voting for who they think is the best candidate – then the Greens would win a lot more seats. And actually, the same thing applies to UKIP.

So what I am suggesting is – don’t be put off voting by feeling that your vote will be ‘wasted’. When you’re working out who to vote for, and I hope that this book will help give some of you the information that you need to do that, don’t pay any attention to the polls in your area. Or the national ones. Don’t listen to the people who say ‘it’s only between Party X and Party Y around here’. When people listen to that, everything stays the same. Everyone needs to have an idea of what they want for our country and from our government, and equally they need an idea of what they want from their local MP. So take the time to work out which of the candidates and parties best match up with your vision, and vote for them. Don’t worry about anything else. If everyone did that, we could see some momentous results. So if you want to vote Green – vote Green. If you want to vote UKIP – vote UKIP. And so on.

I realise that safe seats – you can read more about these in the Representation chapter – are frustrating. But they don’t necessarily stay safe for ever. Nothing is fixed in that way. In 2008, Crewe and Nantwich, a safe seat that had only ever been held by Labour, was won by the Conservatives. Last year, there was a by-election in the constituency of Heywood and Middleton in Greater Manchester, which is Labour heartland. That seat has been considered safe for years, but Labour only won it from UKIP by the skin of its teeth. That’s worrying for Labour, but great for our democracy. It shows that change can happen. It also means that the parties can’t afford to neglect safe seats. They have to go after your vote, which is the way it should be. Nigel Farage has come out and said that he doesn’t believe safe seats exist any more. Natalie Bennett agrees, saying, ‘UKIP is a threat to both Labour and Tories, and its new-found popularity means that swathes of the country which were once considered safe seats are no longer secure.’ Of course, it is in their interests to say that, but they are right. Everything is up for grabs.

What’s more is that the youth vote has enormous power. There will be 6.8 million 18–24-year-olds eligible to vote in May 2015, that’s nearly 14 per cent of the electorate. Studies suggest that around 190 seats could be decided by a 5 per cent shift in votes, and that means the youth vote could decide those outcomes. Another report by the Intergenerational Foundation concludes that, based on the 2010 election results, an increase of just 10 per cent in the number of 18–34-year-olds voting would change the result in 83 seats. So it is plain wrong to think that your vote doesn’t count for anything. To put it in simple terms, at the last general election, if all of the eligible young people had voted for Labour, we’d now have a different party in government. That is a huge difference. The only thing that is guaranteed not to make a difference is if you don’t vote.

This is all well and good but what if, after figuring out what you want from your MP and the government, you find that none of the parties and none of the candidates represent you well enough? That is perfectly possible. Then what should you do? Well, if you honestly don’t feel that you can even identify a ‘best of a bad bunch’, don’t vote for any of them. But you can still vote, and make your voice heard.

As the title of the book suggests, and as I said in the introduction, I hope that one day there will be a ‘None of the Above’ box on the ballot paper. They have just introduced one in India – the thirteenth country to give their people the option to reject all candidates. For now, though, there is a way around the problem: it’s called ‘spoiling your ballot’. What that means is that you have submitted your ballot paper but not made it clear who you’ve voted for. I find the name – ‘spoiling’ – annoying, because it makes it sound like a mistake, or an act of naughty rebellion. It doesn’t have to be either. You could simply cross through all of the options and write None of the Above. You could even use a sticker from the cover of a book. That is a totally fair vote and, crucially, it will get counted. If you don’t vote, that doesn’t get counted and, trust me, you will get written off as apathetic. There is nothing apathetic about spoiling your ballot if you don’t feel that you can vote for any of the parties.

There are other things you can do too. If you feel totally disenchanted with what you see on offer, why not join a political party and fight to change things from within? Or why not create your own political party? That sounds farfetched, but in Spain a new party called Podemos (which means ‘We Can’) started in early 2014 and won five seats at the European Elections. It has the second largest membership of any party in Spain and it’s barely a year old. That is incredibly inspiring. The simple fact is that the more people we have challenging those in power, the healthier our democracy becomes. And the primary way that we challenge and make our voices heard is by voting.

There are things that politicians could do to help increase the youth turnout. Voting should be online, and at some point it will be online. That is inevitable – there are several very well-funded companies developing the technology right now. Young people are digital natives, so it’s obvious that we should be taking voting to where they are. It would also help anyone who has struggled to get to a polling station for whatever reason. Security concerns are exaggerated – if we’re happy to bank online, surely we should be happy to vote online. I’m surprised that none of the parties has come out and said that they will introduce online voting by, say, 2020. Apart from anything else, just supporting online voting would itself be a vote winner with young people, simply because it would demonstrate an interest in getting them to vote. An interest that is sorely lacking at the moment.

---

I’ll say it one more time. If you care about anything in this book – you have to VOTE.

2. Party Differences Aren’t all the parties the same?

In a word, no. What’s striking is that this misconception actually suits politicians down to the ground. Because if you think like that, it means you’re much less likely to vote. Which leaves politicians to focus on winning the support of the people who they know will vote (hello, old people), which is much more likely to get results than going after people who might. And as I explained in the previous chapter, the result of this is: young people getting screwed.

When Russell Brand talks about having no one to vote for, he is referencing this notion that the parties are ‘all the same’. Actually, he would have to accept that that isn’t true – what is holding him back from voting is that he doesn’t feel that there is a party that represents his values, which is a different point. A colleague of mine once mentioned to Brand the idea of spoiling his ballot, and he responded by getting quite cross and saying that was childish, or words to that effect. I would argue that’s what they (I’m not quite sure who I mean by ‘they’ – the political class, maybe) want you to think.

Anyway, I maintain that the parties are fundamentally different, and that it is possible to tell them apart. The terms that get bandied about most when talking about political parties are ‘left wing’, ‘right wing’ and ‘moderate’ (or ‘centrist’). What do they all mean? Well, depending on their politics, people answer this question in very different ways. Here’s my best, simplified representation of how both the left and the right see things.

The world according to the left

‘We on the left believe in equality. We seek to achieve this by sharing wealth around. One of the ways we do this is through taxation. We believe in fairness, and it is fair that the rich should give some of their money to the poor, so that ultimately, there is no rich and poor. When people are struggling, when people are ill, we believe the moral thing to do is to is to support them. The free health service is one of our ideas. So are welfare benefits.

‘We are progressive. We have been at the forefront of pushing for the fair treatment of minorities. The left has always supported things like LGBT rights. People on the margins – be they the disabled, ethnic minorities, immigrants, or whoever – have friends on the left. We will always stick up for them. We won’t give up on people who get in trouble either. We’ll try to help you, not punish you.

‘We have to regulate businesses, because otherwise they will run wild with their rampant capitalism and thirst for profit. The right are obsessed with the free market and it’s “freedom to succeed”, but it’s not freedom to succeed – it’s freedom to fail! It’s not Survival of the Fittest, it’s Death of the Weakest!

‘We tend to be outward-looking and to work with other countries. In recent years we have tended to support being part of the EU, and other international institutions like the European Court of Human Rights. We believe foreign policy should be just, and believe it’s not only morally right but in our own interests to help fund development overseas.

‘When Ed Miliband went on political show The Agenda, he ended up having a disagreement with Mylene Klass over the mansion tax. They were never going to agree, because their worldviews are so different. It is fair that we tax the rich! She would never understand that.’

The world according to the right

‘We on the right believe in equality and fairness too! But not like those Lefties. We want to live in a world where everyone has the opportunity to work hard and do well for themselves. We believe in a strong country that we can be proud of – and many of us say a strong defence is the first duty of government. We don’t see anything wrong with putting our own people first.

‘We are worried about the numbers of immigrants because of the pressure on public services, housing and wages. We also worry that they are not integrating and continue to live in separate communities. Although some of the business owners among us favour immigration, we all agree the test should be what’s good for the country. If immigrants aren’t good for Britain, then they can’t keep coming here. We tend to be more sceptical of how effective international aid is.

‘We believe there is nothing wrong with defending traditional values and institutions – although we are willing to move with the times. Many of us supported gay marriage, for example. The left is obsessed with rehabilitation of criminals – all very noble, but victims should always be put first, and the deterrent by strong punishments will keep our citizens safe.

‘Whenever governments interfere with the market, they tend to make things worse. The market has given us fantastic wealth and prosperity – what would you rather, the untold misery of a Communist regime?

‘What Mylene Klass said to Ed Miliband was spot on – you can’t just point at things and tax them! Of course you shouldn’t tax people to high heaven who’ve worked hard to make money and then give it to someone who’s done nothing! How is that possibly fair?’

---

The political spectrum, from left-wing, to moderate, to right-wing, doesn’t totally describe the range of ideologies, and there are lots of issues – for example, civil liberties (things like freedom of speech and privacy) – which are hard to fit onto this left/right axis. In fact many people are sceptical of the definitions, and no doubt it’s possible to pick holes in the accounts I’ve written above, but the truth is that these terms do still get used. They are clearly helpful for people trying to understand where the parties stand.

When you’re choosing who to vote for, it’s well worth having a think about these opposing positions. Work out which you agree with most. It’s really important to figure these things out for yourself, don’t just follow the lead of family or friends or whoever. Whatever you decide will be the right answer for you. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. In this book, I’ll try to get across the views of the left and the right so you can make up your own mind. And remember that when making your decision about who to support, you are unl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Intro
• Chapter 1: Voting
• Chapter 2: Party Differences
• Chapter 3: The Rise of UKIP
• Chapter 4: Benefits
• Chapter 5: Broken Promises
• Chapter 6: Immigration
• Chapter 7: Coalition Government
• Chapter 8: The Housing Crisis
• Chapter 9: Devolution
• Chapter 10: The NHS
• Chapter 11: Leadership
• Chapter 12: Jobs and the Economy
• Chapter 13: Big Business
• Chapter 14: Climate Change
• Chapter 15: Representation
• Chapter 16: Public Finances
• Chapter 17: Drugs
• Chapter 18: Social Media
• Chapter 19: The EU
• Chapter 20: Inequality
• Chapter 21: Celebrity Involvement in Politics
• Chapter 22: Alternatives to Our Democracy
• Thanks
• Outro
• Glossary
• References
• Copyright