Democracy is irrelevant and the impact of voting is negligible, according to Russell Brand.
Democracy is irrelevant and the impact of voting is negligible, according to Russell Brand. Much more important, he writes, is that there are ‘Men and women strong enough to defy the system and live according to higher laws.’
If this is all a bit Mussolini for you, then I have some good news: voting can and does change things and there is no need to rely on the power of ‘strong men and women’ and ‘higher laws’.
Here are just five reasons why voting is so important. I’m sure you can think of more.
1. It kept the far-right out
In 2004, the British National Party narrowly missed out on a seat in the London Assembly, losing by just a handful of votes. In 2008, the party also came close to winning council seats in Amber Valley where the party lost by just a single vote.
Considering the fact that Russell Brand has spent some time around the BNP for his documentary Nazi Boy, it’s strange that he doesn’t recognise how crucial voting has been in keeping the fascists out.
2. It made possible the creation of the National Health Service
Believe it or not, the Attlee government of 1945 to 1951 had to win an election in order to carry out its sweeping social reforms such as the creation of the NHS. At the risk of stating the obvious, Labour secured a 393 seats majority in the House of Commons because people actually went out and bothered to vote.
There was plenty of ‘revolution’ in Russia at the time of course if that was your thing, where millions of people were being murdered by Stalin and the Bolsheviks; but the welfare state was created by compromise and lots of boring meetings. Oh, and by voting.
3. It kept Labour in power between 1997 and 2010
It has become incredibly fashionable in recent years to sneer at the last Labour government. Like most forms of cynicism, however, this depends on a certain amount of detachment from the consequences of apathy. To put it bluntly, Russell Brand has a $2 million dollar mansion in the Hollywood Hills; it therefore makes very little difference to him whether there is a minimum wage or not or whether there are free prescriptions for people undergoing treatment for cancer.
This is not to say that wealthy people don’t often care about such things; but ultimately they do have the option of not caring, whereas poor people don’t. This is why celebrity cynicism should be taken with a pinch of white powder.
4. Young people get a raw deal from politics precisely because they don’t vote
Russell Brand has been commended by many for connecting with young people who get a raw deal from the political establishment. And I would agree, today’s young people do seem to have a hard time of it compared to older relatives. There is no longer any such thing as a job for life, a university education incurs massive debts, and for most young people buying a home is a pipe dream.
You can be sure, however, that the government and the opposition will court the so-called grey vote far more assiduously than young people as we approach the 2015 General Election. And the rational for doing so is simple: older people are far more likely to turn out to vote than younger people. Getting young people engaged in politics and voting would do far more to change this than encouraging them to become even more apathetic than they already are.
5. If you don’t believe in voting, what do you believe in?
While it may be enough on the celebrity circuit to rally against ‘the regime’ and lazily call for ‘revolution’, if you appear on programmes like Newsnight and in the pages of the Guardian you should expect to have to expand on what it is that you want.
Brand puts his faith in ‘Men and women strong enough to defy the system and live according to higher laws.’ But what ‘higher laws’? and who makes such ‘laws’? When he calls for ‘socialist equality’ what does he mean? Absolute equality secured by extreme force, or a reduction in inequality? If it’s the latter, then that is a view I share, which is why I will vote for a candidate at the next election who proposes that. If it’s the former, North Korea is supposed to be very nice at this time of year.
88 Responses to “A response to Russell Brand: Five ways that voting does make a difference”
Herman_Duca
The first point doesn’t make any sense since the BNP went on to win a seat on the London Assembly in 2008 and two seats in the Euro Parliament in 2009. By your logic does this mean that voting is now bad? Is voting only good when it doesn’t elect people you are politically opposed to? Sure, more people voting would have kept the BNP out on these occasions, but nonetheless, they were democratically elected by the ballot box.
So what you’re saying is, voting is the solution for all our problems, but only as long as it’s for the Labour Party? No mention of the bloated House of Lords, the joke of first past the post, the unaccountable (and also by the way, elected, if only by themselves) City of London elite who use our country has the centre of the world wide tax haven web…
What an arrogant, childish sentiment. Just vote Labour Russell, that’s the solution! If not, I’m sure North Korea would welcome you!
clivegsd
I hate Russell Brand, but I’m not voting at the next general election out of principle. No party has deserved my vote so no party gets it. That is not “apathy” that is my choice.
As a full time unpaid carer I’ve watched Labour ignore us and attempt to remove the disability benefits and allowances that disabled people rely on to exist, and I’ve seen the Conservative and Liberal Democrats- because I blame them equally, viciously go after disabled people in a way even Thatcher would have been too scared to contemplate.
People should withhold their votes and make it the lowest turnout in history, that way no political party can legitimately claim to be working “for the people” because the people will have given them the finger.
Stick a ‘none of the above’ option on the next GE ballot paper and watch it be the biggest turnout for decades. When a party is invented that decides to defend the poor and vulnerable then I’ll vote, but while all three main parties are Tories of one colour or another they can go **** themselves
Alec
By all means, spoil you ballot paper in the absence of Ron being on it.
Think-up a particularly truculent insult, and all the observers from the various parties running will be squabbling over ownership… “no! It’s my candidate he wants to do that!”.
#alec
Richie Nimmo
Although I think what Brand had to say about mass disenfranchisement and the paltry nature of the political choice on offer within the party system was pretty accurate, I’m fairly sympathetic to the argument that encouraging non-voting is irresponsible, essentially because the practical result will be to boost the chances of Tory re-election. However, just to illustrate the extraordinary weakness of the arguments in the piece above, I would point out that one could use the exact same arguments in the reverse manner, thus:
1. It sometimes lets the far right in. (OR it gives smaller parties no chance)
It’s no good listing the occasions when electoral process has denied power to the far right unless you also acknowledge the occasions when voting has given the far right a platform, of not actual power. The ultimate historical example would be the original democratic election of Hitler. There is nothing inherent in voting that is more of an obstacle to the far right than it is to any other small parties. So perhaps the point is really that our ‘first past the post’ majoritarian electoral system prevents small parties from having any chance of ever becoming major players. That’s not a good thing in itself. Indeed arguable it is anti-democratic.
2. It has made possible the destruction of the National Health Service. (OR, once in power they do whatever they want)
This one’s straightforward. The current changes to the NHS – amounting to backdoor privatisation – were not in any way foreshadowed in the Tory or Lib Dem manifestos or election pledges, yet once in power they soon set about a historic dismantling of the NHS. So, to return to Brand’s point, what’s the point in voting if the parties just do whatever they want once they are elected anyway? What does voting achieve in this case except giving a specious mandate to an elected dictatorship to do whatever the hell they want? Again, there is voting but no democracy, because the mandate that supposedly flows from the people is abused.
3. It kept the Tories in power from 1979 to 1997.
You can’t list the good things that some elected governments have achieved without also acknowledging the appalling things that other elected governments have achieved. This is the A, B, C of logic, I would have thought.
4. This argument I do agree with, and it is the main reason I personally find Brand’s advocacy of non-voting problematic. Although it’s quite a circular argument, because the low turnout amongst young voters has a lot to do with the fact that whatever they vote for it seems to make no difference, and promises which are important to the young turn out to be built on sand (re: Clegg and the tuition fees pledge). So non-voting by the young may not be apathy so much as a triumph of experience over hope.
5. The oldest and laziest argument of anti-revolutionaries is that anyone who calls for revolution but cannot immediately deliver a detailed and concrete blue-print of the utopian post-revolutionary society they want to see is just a dreamer. It’s a pretty silly critique, And as for the fatuous references to ‘extreme force’ and North Korea, Brand did make it pretty clear that he’s not advocating violence, but just genuinely radical social change. Yes he is vague about it, but he admits that there are people much better equipped to think through these issues than him – he alluded to the emergence of the occupy movements 1% vs 99% analysis for example. And I think it’s a reasonable view that the sort of change that would challenge this socioeconomic structure will not now come through the electoral system. That’s not to say that positive and significant changes can’t be achieved through our electoral system; I believe they still can, and even small improvements really affect people’s lives and are worthwhile. That is Robert Webb’s point, and it’s why I’ll be voting in 2015 to try to do my part to get the current criminals out of power. But in the longer term I don’t set my horizons so low. I don’t delude myself that a possible Labour government will really change the nature of our exploitative capitalist society fundamentally and bring into being a genuinely fair and egalitarian socioeconomic system of the sort that I would want to see. So I will be voting, but I expect to be disappointed, and – like Brand – I ultimately remain a revolutionary.
Richard Polhill
Have you seen the stats for Surrey Heath?
http://www.surreyheath.gov.uk/news/news.htm?mode=10&pk_news=745
Even if all 23,514 voters who failed to vote turned up and voted Labour, the Conservatives would still have won, 31,326 to 29,066.
I’m sure more people would’ve been moved to vote if their vote could be counted for something, but FPTP just discards all those opinions.
Now I do vote but my one vote is never going to touch a 73% landslide. A result which is the case every election. So it’s fair to ask why bother?