GE2024 – Final Thoughts

This is the transcript of my YouTube video "GE2024 – Final Thoughts". 

This year’s General Election truly was the culmination of the last few decades, the slow rightward drift of UK politics until reasonable political stances are considered extreme Left and the extreme Right is now considered standard operating procedure for the Tories. On top of that, lies that were always a part of politics, regardless of the country, have become so prevalent that no one bothers to push back on obvious untruths in political discourse.  Once upon a time you could barely spot the lies until they were pointed out to you but now the lies are so barefaced and blatant that they are accompanied by flashing neon signs and a klaxon declaring “BULLSHIT” at top volume yet they are still ignored as just something politicians do.

The Rightward drift of politics and the constant lies have also brought us to the point where there is no trust left in politics, not that there was much to begin with.  There’s little left of the thin veneer of democracy that we laughingly considered we had and the electoral system we have has delivered a result that is hardly representative of the electorate.

The Tories are gone.  Too bad, so sad, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  The party formerly known as Labour has taken power on what seems to be a landslide until you realise that the so-called landslide victory has merely highlighted the corrupt and broken nature of the UK’s electoral system.  The massive majority now held by the party formerly known as Labour is based on the lowest voter turnout for 20 years, fewer votes than Corbyn’s Labour got in 2019 and a smaller vote share than Corbyn received in 2017.  The fact that Corbyn’s Labour got more votes in 2019 yet resulted in a massive defeat and loss of seats whilst the party formerly known as Labour received fewer votes that results in a massive win and a large majority is an artefact of the First-Past-The-Post system that we have been lumbered with for years because it has produced a system that favours the two main parties, led to increasingly disproportionate allocation of Parliamentary seats and penalised the smaller parties who have to get a disproportionately high number of votes per Parliamentary seat compared with the main parties.

It’s time that the First-Past-The-Post system was changed to allow a truly representative Parliament even if that means more Members of Parliament from the Far Right or Far Left.  Proportional Representation would be a far more democratic system and now that the Tories have been almost wiped out even they are moving towards a pro-PR stance with only the party formerly known as Labour against the idea.

We need a better political system and better people for our politicians neither of which will happen unless we demand them.  What we have isn’t working but what we need isn’t in the interests of career politicians so we have a fight on our hands or my fears will be only too real, however, that’s the subject of my next video.