In something of a surprise move, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called a snap General Election to take place on July 4th 2024, which will give the voting populace the opportunity to choose a new government.
The latest that a general election could have taken place was in January 2025, as the last one was in December 2019, and it was widely expected that Sunak and the Conservatives would have tried to hold on for power for as long as possible, with the GE believed to have been scheduled for late Autumn this year, around October or November.
I have seen a lot of social media comments along the lines of “its 1997 all over again”, but equally I feel it is just as much “2010 all over again”.
So many years of one party fucking over the country and its people, then its the other party’s turn.
In 1997 after 18 years of Conservative government, Labour swept into power with a resounding majority, “things can only get better” and all that.
Thirteen years later, some time after Tony Blair had deserted the sinking ship, fed up voters returned a Conservative government, albeit in coalition with the Liberal Democrats but only until 2015.
Fourteen years on, here in 2024, and it looks very likely that Labour will form the next government with Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, because voters are now ‘fed up’ with the current Conservative government.
History Repeating
I’m old enough now to know about the cycle of election ‘change’, and that in reality nothing really changes, the same agendas plod on, regardless of what colour the party rosettes are.
Back in 1997, I had already come of age and it was my first opportunity to vote in a General Election. At that age, I hadn’t known any different, I’d grown up with a Conservative government after all, and no doubt many people my own age were ready to vote for ‘something different’.
Now I think about it, I didn’t actually vote Labour on that occasion, although both my parents were ‘traditional’ working class Labour voters. I must have twigged on at an early age what was going on, as at the time I voted Lib Dem, as I felt I agreed with their policies more, or just wanted to ‘rebel’ against the status quo.
Children born in 2002-2006 will now be getting their first opportunity to vote, and again they won’t have known any different and will be eager and ready to vote Labour this time, because they have been ‘programmed’ to do so from birth.
The bad and the ugly
As I have seen from my own previous experiences, while there are always a number of candidates representing different parties, the mainstream media prefers to keep your attention on the Establishment legacy parties, in particular Labour or Conservative.
While some ‘lip-service’ has been paid in recent years to the likes of the Lib Dems and Greens, as well as so-called ‘nationalist’ parties in other countries of the UK such as Plaid Cymru and the SNP (Scottish National Party), it would appear that for this election campaign, these parties are going to be pushed aside, so that the main media focus can be on the two ‘main’ parties, with a suggestion being made that the televised ‘leaders debates’ should only involve Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.
It’s almost ironic that when it comes to gender, the establishment is very keen to push non-binary ideologies, however when it comes to politics then there is only ever one binary choice!
I am pretty confident that when it comes to the crunch, Labour will win this election but I am not so sure that it will be as comfortable a majority as many people are speculating.
Voter apathy is what helps the Establishment maintain it’s grip on power, all under the cloak of ‘democracy’. Voter turnout is generally in the minority, with a majority of voters not bothering at all. It just takes a majority of those who do bother to determine the outcome. And those that do bother are those who will turn out in force to vote Conservative or Labour, just because that is what they are ‘told’ to do, or because “that’s how my parents always voted”, or some other spurious reason.
But what happens when people turn out to vote because they’ve been given some other reason to do so?
George Galloway became an MP on the back of a “lend Gaza your vote” mantra, by appealing to Muslim voters in Rochdale who were concerned about the plight of Palestinians caught up in the conflict in Israel.
Others have since tried to jump on this bandwagon, notably independent West Midlands Mayor candidate Akmed Yakoob, who achieved a good percentage of the vote in Birmingham, and probably ensured that the Labour candidate Richard Parker only won by a very tight margin overall.
Following his by-election win in February, Galloway announced that his Workers Party Of Britain was intending to stand 50-60 candidates at any forthcoming general election. It is probably not hard to work out where those candidates will be fielded, most likely in constituencies that also have high numbers of Muslim residents, all ready to turn their backs on Labour, and instead ‘lend their vote to Gaza’.
The aforementioned Akhmed Yakoob has already announced that he intends to stand against Labour’s Shabana Mahmood in Birmingham Ladywood, though at this point it is unclear whether he will stand as an independent or if he will represent the Workers Party.
George Galloway and his Workers Party won’t need much media exposure to get their message across – Muslims live in close-knit communities, and their community ‘leaders’ as well as imams at the mosques will no doubt be encouraging their worshippers to ‘vote for Gaza’, even though this national election has little to do with this conflict going on thousands of miles away.
There will no doubt be other independents across the country who will use the Gaza crisis to harvest votes as well.
The media will of course continue to trumpet that voters only really have a choice between Labour and Conservatives, and that puts a lot of people off voting, because they think it isn’t worth it. Low turnouts help the likes of the Workers Party, because it means they need fewer votes, as long as a large minority of the electorate make the effort to go and vote for them. You only have to look at the Rochdale by-election result as a case-in-point.
Now imagine if we could motivate enough people to head down to the polling station and vote for a candidate from the likes of UKIP, English Democrats or Heritage Party for example – parties that sit outside the mainstream establishment and have policies and manifestos completely at odds with the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems et al, and which most of the non-voting electorate would probably be in favour of.
I’m not going to endorse the likes of Reform UK or Reclaim, as I believe they are phoney parties, created by the Establishment as a kind of ‘controlled opposition’. It is no surprise that Reform UK are enjoying a lot of mainstream media exposure of late, despite performing worse than Lib Dems and Greens in recent elections, both of whom are now virtually ignored by much of the media. Asute readers will remember that exactly the same happened with UKIP prior to the EU Referendum; at the time under the stewardship of Nigel Farage, I believe they were being used by the Establishment as a ‘pressure relief valve’ for disaffected right-wing Tory voters, hence why they never really built on the great success they had at the 2015 General Election. (Yes it is true that they only returned one MP, but on total number of votes cast across the country they finished in third place overall)
A prediction?
It goes without saying that no matter how it happens, Labour will form the next government, and Keir Starmer will become Prime Minister.
The polling ‘experts’ are already expecting a huge landslide victory for Labour, and while I believe that is entirely possible, I also wouldn’t rule out these ‘experts’ being blind-sided by the likes of the Workers Party and even the Greens.
The Green Party seem to be entirely redundant now, after all a lot of their policies, especially those surrounding the climate and environment, have already been adopted by the Conservatives, and no doubt Labour will continue with them as well. Youngsters voting in a General Election for the first time may choose to reject Labour and Conservatives and vote Green instead, after all they are the ones who have been programmed the most through school and college into believing their future “has been stolen” and far more radical policies need to be introduced.
One would hope that voters in Scotland have finally worked out that the Scottish National Party (SNP) is anything but ‘nationalist’ – yes they may want their independence from the UK, but would then hand their new-found sovereignty straight back to the European Union. Yeah, that’s proper “taking back control”!
The expectation is that people will flood into polling stations to vote Labour because “fed up with Tories” but I’m not sure that this is such a foregone conclusion.
The Tories will take a beating, that is for sure, and while Labour will win a large number of seats, I actually don’t think they’ll win enough for an outright majority, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have to form a government ‘propped up’ by either the Workers Party, Green Party or SNP.
Then it really would be 2010 all over again, “coalition of chaos” and all that rhetoric from the media.
Conclusion
It is never my intention to tell you, the reader, who you should vote for, that is entirely your choice.
The current system is completely crooked – “first past the post” system of vote counting and deciding the winner only works if there is a binary choice, Labour (Red) or Conservatives (Blue), and completely disadvantages smaller parties, for whom a system of proportional representation would allow a fairer makeup of Parliament.
Not voting is the worst thing you can do. Closely followed by ‘spoiling’ your ballot paper – yes it is true that these are counted and recorded, but ultimately they have no effect on the result, no matter how much you protest, because they are not considered ‘valid’ votes.
To beat the system at its own game, we have to play the system by its own rules. True opposition parties need to get their acts together, and try to reach out to the ‘silent majority’ who don’t bother to vote, and give them a reason to do so.
It is important to remember that the current status quo is being maintained by the Establishment on the back of a vocal minority of people, those that do go and vote, and just continue to vote for “more of the same”.
The media aids and abets them by convincing people that they only have two choices – Labour or Conservative. Cast your vote for whichever candidate ticks your box, every vote counts. If you want to vote Reform, Green, Lib Dem, UKIP, Heritage Party, English Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc then do so, don’t fall into the media’s trap of thinking you have to ‘tactically’ vote Labour or Conservative “to stop the other lot from getting in”.
If your vote doesn’t go to the “winner”, then at least you can sleep safe in the knowledge that “I didn’t vote for this” and you then have every right to criticise the party that ends up forming your Government.
If there is no suitable candidate representing a party that you agree with then I appreciate it might be not worth bothering to go and vote. In which case, why not stand for election yourself?
There is no such thing as the Scottish *Nationalist* Party.