|| Friday: December 13: 2019 || ά. This general election has been a dismal one in terms of public engagement in the electoral process. Roughly, less than 50% of the people have taken part in the process of yesterday’s democratic process. This disengagement and withdrawal of the disempowered is an indication of the people’s loss of faith in their ability to influence the outcome and their efforts in seeking to achieve some form or manner of ‘empowerment’ by staying away. The election has been won not by anything else but by wild populism, rising nationalism in all parts of the country, most absolute expressions of this happened in England and Scotland where nationalism have advanced much further as the Northern Ireland and Wales seem to follow.

This general election will come to be seen by historians as one when the fate of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had been sealed, which had begun by the ill thought out devolution process, initiated by the Tony Blair Government, that did not create parallel devolution for England by which the devolution created the grounds of English disenfranchisement and sense of resentment as the other parts of the country went towards having their own ‘powers’ developing and with it growing nationalism. English nationalism found its means to advance its voice and assert its power in the leave the European Union Referendum with which it has fought and won but with this it has brought the United Kingdom to a point where its existence as a country faces an  all but definitive doom; it is not whether but by when. Sir John Major would be right as many other people when he warned, ‘’It will make our country poorer and weaker. It will hurt most those who have least. Never have the stakes been higher, especially for the young. Brexit may even break up our historic United Kingdom.’’

This general election has been won by wild populism, advancing nationalism everywhere in the UK and the ever-going and concerted media manipulation by the rich-owned outlets, as well as, the effective, dangerous and absolute manipulation of the media outlets themselves by the propaganda machine of the Conservative Party, that has established a sure-shot means to keep on manipulating the media outlets themselves and kept them talking about and writing about, broadcasting out their leader, regardless of whatever they were writing about, talking about whereby it ensured that they were not writing about the issues, talking about their programmes and manifesto and their records. Further, the polls, polls of polls, projections and conjectures kept up a frame of reference: the Conservative Party has the lead of x, y z% from where the entire media and press did not shift a point to challenge them or move their focus to include the issues and agenda of the election. This has spread a horrendous and absolute ‘hopelessness’ among the electorate, who thought the Conservative Party had already won the election and nothing could change that and, thus, so many simply did not bother to go out and vote to seek and try to influence the outcome.

The distorteddia have taken hold of the entire electoral system and democracy is now delivered by its terms and here absolute and endless herding, manipulation and spread of lies, untruths, falsehoods, fabrications and concoctions, mythologies, propaganda, misinformation and fake stories and discrediting and destroying facts, truth and reality and with it the vileness, abuse, attacks, hostility have spread. For the distorteddia general elections appear to have become their ‘open season’ to make a killing out of the advertising revenue they get from it, in which not just political parties are paying but many other dark and obnoxious people and agencies are playing. This election has proved that democracy itself and the democratic election process are facing the most serious, most dangerous and terminal threats, if, this keeps on going. 

And, the continued brewing and culturing of the ever-going arguing and debating and abusive, aggressive and hostile atmosphere about the European Union has been going on for far to long for any healthy atmosphere for healthy debates and people have become sick and tired and nauseous about the entire thing and they simply wanted this to come to an end. This, people getting sick and tired and nauseous or, rather, this utter negation played the greatest part so that they simply did not want to hear anything else. Not only tThey did not want to hear anything else but, also, they did not hear anything else. Furthermore, in adversarial system, elections are always divisive as parties fight against each other, that creates an unhealthy, though, for a short while, divisive social environment, which improves with time and people get to move out of it with time; however, when there are too many elections in too short a space of time, that time to ‘heal and move away and on’ does not get to take place and people get affected by the negativity, that they are still in from the previous elections. An example of this is what is happening in Israel. Soon, there politicians would find it impossible to sustain an election system there where people are very likely to begin to, simply, stay at home from elections they did not want. It is terrible for democracy as Israeli situation shows and it is the same in the UK. How many elections have taken place in the last ten years!

With this came the other issues: the country was divided by leave and remain; there were many on leave side, which received leadership on the issue while the other parties failed to offer any meaning leadership on the remain side, which, simply, got fed up, angry and felt terribly abandoned. The Liberal Democrats were not going to get anywhere with their ‘Revoking Article 50’, which was an absolute non-starter, simply, because the remainers did not want the result of the Referendum ‘written off’ but they wanted another final opportunity to have the issues put before the country and people for a final choice and take it from there. The Labour Party, despite its progressive, radical and comprehensive programmes, has made a mess of its position on the Referendum following the plebiscite and it spent an ‘infinite’ amount of time in which it ruined all it had achieved in the last general election. Leadership was needed from the Labour Party: it ought to have made its choice whether to lead on this issue and choose to champion one side or the other; it ought to have provided leadership on remain so that the remainers would have found their place and those, who were seeking leadership on the other side, would have found the reason to change over to remain were the Labour Party to put the case as to the national harms leaving the European Union would do to the country. Whatever happens later, at least, the Party would have stood for something. Instead, it had made a mess and gone for a situation, that made its position dreadful. Furthermore, the very young people, who were the Labour Party’s ‘energy mechanics’ since the last general election, have lost their faith in the Labour Party because they are overwhelmingly remain and they support the Labour Party policies on all other vital issues. Thus, the Labour Party has lost its vital ‘energy mechanics’, the young people, who did not go out to work for the Party campaign as they did in the last election nor did they take part in the election by as massive numbers as they did before.

The vital point about this loss is this that people stopped listening. It did not matter what the Labour Party did or said no one heard it because it had lost the ‘ears’ of the people and the media outlets were busy writing about ‘petty antics’ of the Conservative Party and its leader and the rest and not about anything else much, that matter and with this the Labour Party did not get its message going too far while all the attacks, negativity and propaganda against it and its leader did reach every ear. The election campaign stared as the election about leaving the European Union and it remained there and nothing else mattered because people wanted to leave voted the Conservatives to ensure that the UK leaves and that’s that. The other side did not have that choice in the Labour Party because it had no clear choice. It was not for either leave or remain. Despite receiving terrible, horrendous and nasty treatment, attacks, abuse and character assassination Mr Jeremy Corbyn kept on going but it was impossible for a human being to not get destroyed by that infinite media onslaught, ever-going and ever-increasing because the vast majority of the media outlets are owned by people, who do not and would not and can not support what he or his party stood for. Further, that reaching every households, it is impossible for the Party workers to not get demoralised and disheartened at the doorsteps as to what people were telling them: that they heard from the media, that destroyed and devastated their leader out in the country or what the political workers called ‘doorsteps’. Neither he nor his Party helped themselves in this because of the stance they took on the question of Europe and, particularly, his position to remain neutral on this issue. With this the Party got in a state that its campaign lacked faith, lacked spirit and failed to inspire and send out its workers out there to fight the election, particularly, the youth.

Despite putting forward a most necessary and vital programme of actions, that 163 economists came out to support, the Party lost the election not to the Conservative Party but to wild populism, nationalism and manipulation in which reason, truth, the earth and humanity, life and environment, the young people and the entire dispossessed majority of the country have been lost. Further loser in this is the United Kingdom itself as a country because nationalism has begun its march past to, ultimately, bring an end to this Union. The question is not whether but by when. Now, there are all sorts of reactions would come from in fighting and recriminations in the Labour Party, that has already begun in earnest, however, there still remains the harms of leaving the European Union and there still remains on the table the prospect of leaving without a deal and the country is still under the same Conservatives, under whom the working and non-working people and the most vulnerable are going to continue to suffer and an effective opposition is ever so much needed, which the Labour Party will fail to do, if, it fell into self-destructive self-recriminations.

In this the wider picture is this that the progressive political forces must look at this prospect of the United Kingdom and come up with a response that, may be, they would begin to see the dangers of what has happened in terms of global warming and climate change and all other vital issues, vast and ever-increasing inequality, poverty and hunger and homelessness and absolute disempowerment, disenfranchisement and disengagement of the people in the system of governance and democracy  and see how it now becomes, almost, pointless to think that these parties and forces can afford to keep on fighting between and among them. There should now take new efforts of creating a dialogue of recreating new political alignments out of which, new political realities may emerge. The Labour Party, the Green Party, what is left of the Liberal Democrats and others should look wider and out and find common but better grounds with better reorganisation and come up with an alternative to challenge and fight on to advance a progressive path for the country otherwise the Conservative Party is there till it has destroyed everything including the United Kingdom itself. In this new political reality the Labour Party could lead a new kind of politics and bring in all the progressive forces in an open dialogue and work with all these forces and they create a different political reality in the changed reality of the country, of European and of the world, that no old political party or ideology can explain. Global warming and climate change is not going to go away; capitalism is not going to go away: inequality, poverty and hunger, rough sleeping and homelessness and the whole rest of the ills and evils are not going to go away, the Conservative Party is not going to change: it will always work for the rich and advance their interests. It is time the progressive forces work together to create one unified platform of all progressive forces in one place, one platform and one voice. One only hopes that these political forces and parties and the Labour Party realise the severe and dangerous waters the UK have entered and they respond to the historic needs to re-craft the progressive forces into one unified voice  on a unified platform and one unstoppable energy to unite, empower and inspire the vast majority of the dispossessed of the country, that have lost at this general election and they will keep on losing and getting more disempowered and disenfranchised until these progressive forces do what ought and must be done now   

|| Readmore || :::ω::: ||

|| reginehumanicsfoundation.com || 131219 || Up ||