Politics. What Are We About?

I had hoped, this time round, that my vote might represent my convictions, that I could be relatively at ease with my conscience by voting for the party I believe in most, the Greens, but the system has, once again, made this impossible. I shall have to vote Labour in order to keep the Tories out. If predictions are correct, it will be a close-run thing in my constituency.

Politics is, as ever, a mixed bag of tricks. Nothing is as clear cut and simple as one would wish it to be when it comes to choosing who will represent us and run the country. In my own constituency we have what is for me a very muddied situation. Our own Conservative MP is one of the best. He is in touch with people, listens to their needs and works hard to serve them. If he were not a Tory I would vote for him. Unfortunately, he embodies something that I find it impossible to identify with, at the heart of which is class and the sense of knowing what’s best for the rest of us that goes with belonging to its upper echelons. Perhaps I find it difficult to vote for what he stands for because my own upbringing conditioned me to accept the idea of a ruling class, the sense of entitlement that some people wear regardless of whether or not they are formally engaged in politics. As a result of this, I feel a mixture of resentment and guilt. I am on the inside. I understand them because I am one of them.

So all this gives rise to a great deal of questioning when it comes to where I stand in regard to the upcoming UK election. If I’m honest about it, one of the things that attracts me to the Greens is that it seems to be the one party that is in a position to welcome someone like me, someone who is far from at home in their ‘natural’ political stable but also lacks the confidence to engage in a full-blooded way with people coming from a different socio-political background. The Greens are quite clearly about the single most important issue facing us in this election; the future of the planet and therefore of all of us.

That being said, people like me do like to know where these others stand. The problem with Labour, which otherwise ticks my morality box, is that it isn’t easy to see what differentiates it from the Conservatives. Those of us who were dyed in the wool half a lifetime ago, when it comes to what or who we stand for politically, be it Conservative or Labour, need something clear to grab hold of if we are to change our political colours with a degree of confidence. We are never sure we really know what we are talking about, or if we are talking about anything at all meaningful. That being said, I’m beginning to suspect that a number of politicians and people who find themselves in influential positions in government are just as much at sea, when it comes to knowing what they’re really about, as I am.

So it’s not surprising that everything gets rendered down to a tick in a box when it comes to playing our part in the democratic process. What is there to talk about? And where is the forum in which such a conversation might take place? George Monbiot, wise and lucid as ever, argues for some kind of participatory consensual political process (Guardian 6^th June, 2024), a process blocked by a powerful and largely wealthy ruling class. He only touches on the idea of class, putting it in its literary and historical context, but that is the unspoken word that we are dealing with, even though we like to think that distinctions of social class, though possibly not of monied ones, have almost disappeared.

Of course, the problem of class and the distinctions it creates can cut both ways, as I find in my dealings with the institutional Church, or rather with the arcane system of governance which it still embraces. Those in charge are a class apart, created by the system itself, and if your accent, education and general persona throw their particular sense of entitlement into question, you are in for trouble. It works both ways, whether you come across as upper class (vaguely redolent of privilege and of a bygone aristocracy) or what used to be called lower or middle class. In both cases, accent and independence of thought give you away.

It’s useful to mention the Church in the light of this discussion because it gives us a kind of close-up view of how human society works, or can work, outside a truly democratic and representative system. Monbiot’s article is helpful because it draws our attention to the way communities are so easily set against each other as a result of the kind of class distinctions which we have long since put behind us, or thought we had. The danger lies in the way this divisiveness makes it impossible to speak about the real issues that we all ought to be facing into and deciding on together, again, as Monbiot rightly points out.

Whether it is possible to forge a new system, beyond resorting to outright revolution, remains to be seen. Personally, I have not altogether given up hope on the idea of a peaceful revolution. After all, if Gandhi could do it, why can’t we? I believe there is such a thing as the collective will, that we are capable of waking up together, and in the same place, when it comes to how we should do politics and even perhaps be Church. What matters is that we wake up to the same pressing need together.

The problem with elections like this one is that for all the vague talk of the good of the nation, on the whole we have little sense of what that means. Nationhood is too often hostage to religious jingoism and flag-waving, as in America (right side up or upside down; it makes little difference), and rarely understood as a coming together of a family of people, children of the promise, the rightful inheritors of hope, the good life as it is meant to be understood. Instead, politics are ultimately about individual interests and what the individual can be promised with relative impunity by the powerful, or those aspiring to high office. Politics are also about fear, not the fear of nuclear devastation, but the fear of waking up to being completely alone in the most profound sense. Political leaders are ultimately tasked with creating a society both materially and existentially where this no longer happens.