Week 27: To Tread More Lightly
Week 27: To Tread More Lightly
The UK looks to have learned that volatility is exhausting, and doesn't bring the rewards it promises.
Brexit was always going to ruin the Conservative Party. Holding a referendum to try and solve an internal party dispute was a terrible idea. It exported this dispute on the broader public and encouraged them to embody the same conflict. Given that the argument for leaving the European Union was built on political fantasy and a misunderstanding of the United Kingdom’s place in the world, the effects were always going to detrimental to people’s lives (although not felt by those advancing the cause). It may have taken a further 8 years, but the collapse of the party was inevitable (and this may finally be a cost they feel).
Yet, Brexit was the expression of a far deeper problem – one that permeated most of what the Tories had done while in office. This time in government was one example of the emotional turbulence that has overrun politics throughout the West. How toddlerism and psychodrama have become these waves of sentiment crashing back and forth between political parties and the public.
Parties that can embody this turbulence can often find great success. People are attracted to them as they broadcast on the same emotional frequency. On this frequency, it is not stability where people feel their emotions can be soothed, but through radical upheaval. A belief that only through a return to a mythical past, the creation something new, or through the destruction of something suspicious, that a social equilibrium can be achieved.
This is where the Tories were and where the Republican Party currently is. It is also what is driving explosive political forces in France and Germany. However, this kind of volatility can never be permanent. The past week the British public expressed their exhaustion from this disorder. The realisation that these emotions and radical fantasies haven’t produced a promised gloryland. That the material effects to people’s lives are noticeably worse.
I fear this is process may also be the case with the United States. We haven’t reached the point yet where people truly understand the damage that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have done (and wish to do). Another term, with Trump fully unleashed, may be necessary for people to fully grasp the madness, calm themselves down and reject this political turbulence. It’s an incredibly dangerous way to learn a lesson though.
Of course, we should recognise that with this election in the UK there are people to whom the chaos of the Conservative Party hasn’t been enough. The Reform Party rolled in offering greater volatility and a significant percentage of people lapped it up. This kind of cynicism and disillusionment remains a strong undercurrent even as the broader public takes a deeper breath and seeks something more stable.
The UK may have cooled itself down a notch for now, but understanding why we are so emotionally turbulent at the moment remains the bigger issue. We are not only feeling insecure, but we have created an all-pervasive culture – which transcends political groupings – that encourages, or even celebrates insecurity. This is having a corrosive effect on our social foundations, not to mention our personal ability to handle the world as it actually is.
Greater insecurity is also leading to more controlling and even dictatorial political movements developing. The more insecure we feel the more we demand conformity or obedience from others as a way to ease our mental burdens. If only other people would fall in line with our personal feelings then the strains of the era will be alleviated.
There was an interesting line in Keir Starmer’s first speech at prime minister, outside 10 Downing St. He stated that he wanted his government to “end the era of noisy performance… [and] tread more lightly on your lives.” If our current anxiety is not only caused by a lack of emotional security, but a lack of cultural security as well, then a government that eschews suspicion of traditional customs or conventions may be able to ease these anxieties and their political expressions (without overlooking practices that are obviously socially detrimental).
Of course, so much of the heavy treading exists outside of government – the HRisation of our societies is clearly stifling to many. But it is how the government incorporates this ethos into its governance (and legislation) that will be the test. As we’ve seen in the United States, easing economic stress doesn’t cool people down, it is cultural stress that is driving our era’s volatility.
A few little other observations on the numbers.
With Labour winning 65 percent of the seats off 34 percent of the vote this is another stark example of why First-Past-The-Post is an absurd voting system. However, you play the game within its current rules, and due to the voting system, Labour’s strategy has been to better target seats. Making sure no vote is wasted. The party’s vote efficiency has be extraordinary.
This is also something that the Liberal Democrats have also done successfully. FPTP has always been cruel to the Liberal Democrats. Prior to the coalition government of 2010-2015 they were a major party in terms of votes (securing around 23 percent of the vote), but not in terms of seats. Around 15 percent of their vote abandoned them in 2015 as punishment for entering into a coalition with the Tories. About 4 percent came back in 2019, and they looked to have gained a modest .6 percent more this election.
It may seem absurd that this has translated into an additional 61 seats, but there is another story here. Although the Lib Dems have clearly benefited from Reform siphoning off votes from the Tories in seats where they were the Tories’s main contender, like Labour, the party has also got far better at making their vote share more efficient. Concentrating on the seats where they have a chance of winning and not on seats where they can’t (and having the benefit of Labour not really making an effort in these seats).
Elections in the UK are not one single election, they are 650 separate elections, and it is the concentration of votes within seats that matters – not a party’s overall vote.1 That said, due to this more effective targeting of seats, the party now has a seat share much closer to its vote share. Excluding the 18 seats in Northern Ireland where there is a different party system, 12.2 percent of 632 is 77.1. A sum now just a handful more than the 72 seats the party won.
This seat share also now presents the Lib Dems with the opportunity to sell themselves as the effective opposition to Labour. The Tories are now most likely about to enter into a period of internal conflict and clownery that’ll make the last eight years look mild. There is a space for a mature and adult political party to do the important work of scrutinising the government. This, of course, will rely on the media actually paying attention to a party with 72 seats though, rather than its obsession with a party with just 5.
In Australia supporters of the Greens continually get roused up about the Greens’ vote percentage being much higher than the National Party, yet the Nationals always win more seats. But the Nationals only contest a handful of rural seats, and they are very effective at winning them. How many votes overall you get is far less important where you get them. One should always understand a system before you get upset with it.