The failed candidates wept and wept throughout the United Kingdom on the night and morning after the 7th May elections, and after they had finished weeping, they wept some more, as the heads of three major political parties resigned their leaderships in disgrace!
The Liberal Democrat Party leader, Nick Clegg, described the election results for his party as, “Immeasurably more crushing and unkind than I could ever have feared,” and with red eyes he announced his resignation. The Labor Party leader, Ed Miliband, was the second biggest loser and looking exhausted he said to his followers, “I take absolute and total responsibility for the result and our defeat at this election … I’m so sorry for all those colleagues that lost their seats.” His was the second head to fall. The resignation of Nigel Farage from the UK Independence Party completed the trio.
Despite the drama of this election result, only 66% of the 46 million people who registered to vote actually did so, and the winning party gained just 11 million of these votes. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, gained enough seats in parliament, however, for a decisive majority. The other winner was the Scottish National Party (SNP) that won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland, where Labour suffered great defeats, including that of the former shadow foreign secretary of the Labour Party, who lost his seat to a 20 year old university student, Mhairi Black, who must now sit for her final exams before taking office as the youngest MP since 1667!
This was an election dominated by fears about the economy and British sovereignty. As for the economy, Britain is still suffering from the 2008 economic downturn and the winning Conservatives can now pursue policies of economic austerity that were promised in the 2010 elections. There are two issues of national sovereignty for the United Kingdom. The first concerns Scotland, which only narrowly voted to remain part of the United Kingdom in a referendum last year. The second issue is that of Europe. The Conservatives have promised a referendum before the end of 2017 to decide whether to withdraw from the European Union.
How much can actually change though? Will the promised referendum on the European Union produce a result that is against the interests of British Corporate finance and industry? Will the internal issues of the economy, such as the changes to taxation laws and public expenditure, take money from the extravagantly rich and place it into the hands of the poor and destitute? The answer is no, every time.
Elections are won and lost by very well funded parties that receive huge contributions for their expensive media campaigns. The Conservatives, for example, received their biggest single donation of 1.28 million pounds sterling from a property millionaire, David Rowland, and the largest individual donor, Michael Farmer, is the founder of a Capital Management fund who has donated 2.2 million pounds sterling since the 2010 elections. Such monies are given to all the major parties, and something is expected from the winners in return!
The close relations between capitalists and politicians in Britain works both ways. A study in 2012 showed that 46% of the top 50 publicly traded companies in the UK had a British parliamentarian as either a director or a shareholder. This is in addition to the many highly paid consultancies that go to former cabinet ministers and members of parliament in order to ensure that these companies have the access to the centers of power on a daily basis that are denied to ordinary voters, whose only role is to vote for the faces that are given to them by the parties funded by the capitalists. In order to ensure that the people make the right choices, the media too is a tool in the hands of the wealthy. One UK newspaper, The SUN, for example once boasted in a front page headline after a previous election result: “It was The SUN what won it!”
So where is the free will of the people, if victory is given by newspapers and corporate funders? Even the losers betrayed something of the truth in a subtle way: “the Labour leader said, “I take absolute and total responsibility,” and the Liberal Democrat leader said, “I must take responsibility”. So democracy is a game of money and skill, where the voters are little more than pieces on a chess board. No wonder that so few of them voted!
By Dr. Abdullah Robin
* Written for Ar-Rayah Newspaper Issue No. 25