The John Griff Column: Brave New World?

It started this year with India – the largest democracy of them all and with an election process to match, being the most complicated to administrate anywhere on the planet. You think ours is stretching? Try doing it with almost a billion eligible voters spread across over a million and a quarter square miles – plus then the collation of postal AND online votes too to ensure all are heard. It’s rather more than ballot boxes and a few thousand form counters physically counting paper…

As the most congested year ever for elections continues to unfold, a series of the major democracies have all shifted to the left. As much as Britain is starting to get used to a majority Labour government, the party itself is doing the same with the challenges of implementing policy, getting used to the practicalities of being in power and the nuances of performing on domestic and international stages as the rest of the world also looks towards what might, or might not be political change. As our new Prime Minister makes his way around the Union, his cabinet members are settling into unfamiliar roles, desks and chairs, while an expectant nation looks on. They won’t have long to familiarise themselves with their new surroundings either – because the world is changing ever more quickly. Against a background of truly dangerous issues with the situations in Israel and Ukraine dominating our newsfeeds and a global economy struggling to recover from pandemic, would you want the job of governing?

Away from our own election, France this week has – amazingly – also shifted left. In November it’s highly likely that the United States will follow suit – at Presidential level at least. It’s as though the global population is signalling a desire for fundamental, universal change. Naturally, there will be a honeymoon period for all new administrations, but in exactly the same way that we as consumers demand change at an ever-faster rate, the same pressures will be brought to bear on our politicians. You said you wanted the job – very well – here’s your mandate – what are you going to do with it today?

The situation in the US could be a hugely protracted affair. Notwithstanding the ages of both protagonists and how they are being perceived, particularly by younger voters (Biden is 81, Trump 78), as with all politicians regardless of persuasion, they need to get voters to actually turn out on the day and cast their votes, rather than assume that the votes will simply come home to roost as if by political osmosis. Here, our own General Election last week is estimated to have drawn a 60% turnout – the lowest since 2001 (59%) and only beaten by that of 1918 (57%). Labour won 411 (63%) of the seats available on just under 34% of the vote – so roughly a third of two thirds of who those who exercised their own mandates (stats from www.fullfact.org). That’s roughly 20% of the electorate.

Before you imagine that I’m about to make a case for proportional representation, I’m not. Plenty from the smaller parties are doing it already – they’ve been doing so for years. How much longer they will need to go on doing so remains to be seen, but in truth I don’t see change coming in my lifetime. What is of greater significance will be how all the parties reach out to motivate and incentivise more people to exercise those mandates. In India this year there was widespread reporting of changes in election results based on the female vote in particular. Here, we’ve witnessed encouragement – pleas in fact – for tactical voting, just to bring about change. The change may have come but now it’s about action, so expectations will be high and particularly so of a party with an outright majority. Sir Keir Starmer will know this only too well from Labour’s time in opposition. The Conservative party now faces a period of rebuilding, not only in the perceived and actual abilities to its representatives to offer a credible alternative, but also, yet again, in its leadership. The same will apply next year when local government elections take place. It gives a window of opportunity to the current incumbents – but it’s a window which will close rapidly until, once again, local voters will have a chance to not only make change locally and send a message to Westminster in the process. Nobody should be sitting back right now.

And yet, paradoxically perhaps it’s what is needed to let everyone settle into their new situations. For me, one of the greatest ever political TV series ever produced was The West Wing. Season by season we watched the twists, turns and chicanery of opposing sides as President Jeremiah Bartlett (played by the excellent Martin Sheen) went through two terms as POTUS. In one episode, Josh Lyman, the Chief of Staff makes the point that regardless of dogma, politicians enter politics so as to make the world a better place for all – which I believe to be a fair and valid point. Now, as we all look out on a real new administration, perhaps we should take a moment to consider that ALL our politicians are real people, trying to do their best as elected representatives. It can be a thankless task – not to mention dangerous and perhaps more so with today’s social media and the hate-speech which abounds at every turn. To date, nine sitting MPs have lost their lives to murder or homicide whilst in office, the most recent being the Conservative MP for Southend West, Sir David Amess in 2021. The first was the then serving Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, shot dead at the age of 50 in the lobby of the Palace of Westminster in 1812. His constituency? Northampton.

Good luck to all our MPs and Councillors – give us good reason to believe in you through your positive actions on our collective behalf.

We’ll be watching you.