Democracy in Action

By Wednesday evening, Theresa May will be sitting in Number 10 as Prime Minister, and that’s frankly mollifying to somebody who not only votes against Tories, but also is typically given the opportunity to vote in the first place. Given her previous voting history, it’s clear that she’s against pretty much every progressional movement of the last twenty years, and whilst we’ve yet to see what she’s like as PM, I think I speak for many more people than myself when I say that we don’t particularly want to find out.

The fact that Theresa May has been chosen, not elected to lead the country speaks volumes about our stance regarding democracy as a country, and to those who will immediately raise the issue of Gordon Brown being an unelected leader, I say that, well, I was freshly twelve at the time and understandably wasn’t taking much notice of politics. And besides, calling out one bad PM to justify another doesn’t really constitute a strong argument, in my books.

I like to believe that Larry speaks for us all.

As for David Cameron, I always believed that when he resigned, it would be a day of elation, but as a certain character who’s name I forget in the Matrix once said… not like this. David Cameron may be an utter pillock (my own views, of course), but he was an utter pillock who ushered in same-sex marriage, and whether that was a political stunt or a legitimate interest of his, it yielded a pleasant result. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t spend my entire life studying the achievements and disgraces of politicians like some over, more professionally political oriented blogs and people might do, but I get the general impression that Theresa May is far more of a bad cookie than David Cameron. And if there’s one thing I cannot forgive, it’s somebody spoiling a cookie to make a political point.

In all seriousness, though, the lack of say that the general public has had regarding the appointing of Theresa May as Prime Minister is simply appalling. Sure, it’s how it’s been done in the past, but the past falls further and further into obscurity and outdated values with each passing year, and we are encouraged to learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them. Some will say that Theresa’s appointment is still part of a democratic philosophy, because of the idea that you could ask your local Tory MP to vote for the leader that you want, as the vote was strictly among MP’s. But that is a wholly less official and reliable system than public polling, as these MP’s mostly have their own agendas and are most likely to ignore the concerns of the public, because they, of course, know better. And when all of this is brought up, they get around the matter by saying that MP’s always have the exclusive right to vote for their party leader.

Sure. So appoint her party leader, and then hold a general election. Theresa May herself has already stated that there will be ‘no general election’, likely due to the already unstable nature of the country (source), but for all I know that could be an easy excuse to secure her seat in power. Before we know it, Larry the Downing Street Cat might be strung up as an example for all male cats who chase other male cats.We might be going to war more easily, seeing more nationalisation, what have you. But maybe those are just the panicked ramblings of an uneasy left-winger.

I’m not done yet, though. On the topic of going to war more easily – remember the vote on Syrian airstrikes? I detest that big, country-affecting decisions like this are made exclusively by MP’s. This follows the aforementioned philosophy of the public going to their local MP and asking for them to vote in a particular direction, and I refer to my aforementioned argument against this. I’m aware that it would be impractical to hold a country-wide referendum for every decision made by Parliament, but I personally believe that many, many more of the important decisions should be put to the public, if not as a percentage of the overall vote, then as a mandatory point of discussion within Parliament before a decision is made. The current system is antiquated, and allows for the richer few to control the poorer many in manners sometimes reminiscent of dictatorship.

(Side-note: I’m trying to make my politically charged blog posts less angry and more pleasant to read. I hope this comes as a welcome change.)

The British Government

As always, I find it important to view the world in a manner outside of social contexts in order to get a full appreciation of the situation. So when you put the British government through this particular analysis, what do you get?

The British Government is an organisation which creates the rules by which the rest of the country lives by. It is a group of people who, despite not getting the majority of people asking them to make decisions, are quite confident in their right to tell other people what is going to happen. And they call the country a democracy by giving people the choice to decide who’s in charge, without making sure that the person in charge doesn’t lie about what they are going to do to gain favour, or allowing people to stop that person from making decisions which are a detriment to the rest of the country once they are in power.

The British Government is a group of wealthy people telling poor people that they are going to get less money by which to live their lives, justifying it well and nodding their heads. They are a group of people who I’m rather sure view the anger of its citizens as another aspect which they need to keep below a certain level. They view the majority of the British population as statistics, and if they become unruly, make promises about the next election which they will ultimately fail to keep.

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is an ill-informed man who makes a great many decisions based on his own personal views. Due to the actions of a small group of extremists that claim they are affiliated with a religion of whose morals they contradict, the Prime Minister has decided that the entire religion is now “poisonous” to “British values”. This man seems to consider British people above all else, unless they are asking for a pay rise. This man’s ignorance steers the country kicking and screaming into disrepair.

You’ll have to excuse me if I sound somewhat biased in this blog post. It’s probably because I’m just one person in a sea of faceless angry voices whom the Prime Minister and his government have decided to ignore in the hopes that we’ll settle down and get on with things. The fact that such ignorance and hatred is driving the decisions he makes as a country is worrying, appalling, and downright disgusting.

It would be absurd for me to deliver this spiel about ignorance and hatred without mentioning that fighting such values with our own ignorance and hatred will get us nowhere. We do not throw things at politicians. We do not target them or burn down their houses. We become better than them, we defeat their arguments, and we change the country the way it is meant to be changed – without violence. But we have to do something about this government before we are all swallowed in its greed and fear-mongering.

Addtional: I want to add that my friend said to me, “It feels like they’re manufacturing rage in order to hide something.” The fact that this actually sounds feasible to me speaks volumes about the direction in which we’re going. And if that is the case, then they’re certainly doing it right, which is almost even more worrying.