It must be so easy to be on the right of politics. With no concern for anyone but oneself, there is almost no need to think about public services and their cost to the taxpayer. OK, you may want a consideration for defence of your lifestyle but apart from that? Zilch.
You barely need to think about politics, society or other irrelevances. In fact, the way things are going, none of us will need to. The ultimate destination for some on the Right is one-party, autocratic governance and if that happens there will be no more politics, no opposition, no debate, no rights.
Politics is so boring
If you think this is an exaggeration, bear in mind Trump’s language and behaviour towards the Democrats and DEI; and here the ambition of the extreme Right towards the European Convention on Human Rights: its abolition. On their respective sides of the Atlantic, MAGA and Reform are on their way to engineering just such a coup, aided by like-minded media devoted to distraction from the true impacts of their “policies”. With ownership of the most accessed media being in the hands of arch-capitalists, it is difficult to know which is the tail and which the dog between media and politicians.
Anyway, let’s face it, most people aren’t a bit interested in politics: “boring”; “they are all the same anyway”; “I am not voting any more”. Actual membership of political parties in UK only totals around 1 million [< 2%]. Long gone already are days when most of the electorate informed themselves via a daily newspaper or broadcast on which they could rely for accuracy or objectivity. Print readership has shrunk to around 1 in 4 adults, of whom presumably a substantial proportion follows celebrities or sport rather than the well-being of the nation.
Most national papers are mouthpieces for the Right anyway. If most people rely for information on unregulated, unedited social media like X we may as well throw in the towel now, for truth will not matter. Democracy will be dead. We can all get on with the gardening or take up new leisure activities like sneaking on lefty neighbours to get them deported, free of any responsibility for anything except our own interests. How Conservative! How peaceful life will be!
And yet…
A simple life
Is this good enough for you? Can you just ignore the unfairness in this country, let alone across the world? Is it so tempting to become selfish because it makes life simpler? Is life just about ME and damn YOU? If I stick to the gardening I am no burden to anyone else, it is true but is that enough for any self-respecting person? We did not evolve by living in solitude, each in our own cave, but by being social, sharing risks, food, pleasures, protection. This surely means that we have some duty towards others and they to us.
Are we all really willing to leave all decisions affecting ourselves, our families, our lives to those awful politicians we decry? Do we want the sort of people who want to lord it over us to do so, without having any redress or alternative? Is meekly obeying someone else’s orders a decent way of life? All of these will result from the absence of politics which autocracy entails and which not bothering will produce. And they will still want our taxes.
Politics must be for everyone
In 1648 this country revolted against the extravagance and inequities of Charles I’s reign and insisted on power lying with Parliament. Exactly 200 years later, people in multiple nations across Europe declared that enough was enough and threatened revolutions against arrogant and extravagant rulers. This led to change, including greater democratisation. More famously still, a little later in both France and the Soviet Union, revolutions actually brought an end to monarchies.
Our nation’s history, of which some are so inordinately proud, culminated in the liberal democratic state of the second half of the last century. All have had a stake in our State, with access to what the rich always had: good education, healthcare, mobility and a decent standard of living. This apex of social evolution is what we risk losing unless the people and our leaders are prepared to resist the wrong sort of change and maintain politics which is for everyone.
This is not to advocate revolution. There is no need for that while we still have democracy, just. Letting it be eroded at the hands of those who already command wealth and influence and who espouse the principle of ‘Me First’ could soon lead to fascism. Let us remind ourselves of the wars fought against this less than 100 years ago and do everything we can to avoid its resurrection.
The Right likes to adopt that war as a symbol of what it was really fought to defeat: nationalism. Our democracy has to be defended but voting for the would-be autocrats is no way of doing so: Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin all achieved power through the ballot box. Not voting at all will mean not having a vote at all in future. Then it will be too late for history lessons or regrets.
We must vote and vote for defenders of democracy.
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