What’s the Point in Voting – feedback from the discussion
The Liverpool Salon debated What’s the Point of Voting? with the help of a lively audience at The Liverpool Athenaeum on Thursday 16 April, during the week the political parties were launching their manifestos. Both speakers used their opening presentations to take a historical perspective on the question.
The starting point for James Heartfield was the 1832 Great Reform Act, which extended voting rights and marked the beginning of an era of political struggle for the vote. James talked about the emerging Left/ Right politics, where voting expressed radically different views about how society should be organised, run and developed. The contestation between Left and Right might sometimes be characterised as ‘tribal’, but in the absence of contestation over big political questions we often experienced politics as something disconnected from ‘real life’.
Harvey talked about the connection between the right to vote and the right to fully participate in society. Giving ‘votes for women’ as an example of women aspiring to take part as equals, an aspiration that became unstoppable after the mobilisation of women and the importance of the ‘home front’ during First World War. Whether challenging the status quo or demanding to participate as equals, both speakers emphasised the connection between voting and making political choices, controlling your destiny and being part of society or being in solidarity with others. Harvey also argued that the sense of your vote not really making a difference was exacerbated by the UK’s ‘first past the post ‘system. In ‘safe’ constituencies, voters felt their ballot paper was wasted. However James proposed that the act of voting was not so much an expression of individual political will but something undertaken in solidarity with others.
The opening presentations set the scene for a lively and at times heated discussion, skilfully chaired by Simon Belt, from The Manchester Salon. James, for example, drew fire by questioning the validity of the Green Party’s election pledge to build half a million homes. Having spent the last decade campaigning for half a million houses to be built to meet the needs of Britain’s growing population, James wondered how seriously we should take an election pledge, which fundamentally contradicted Green policies on reducing carbon emission. Some people argued that the speakers were being unduly pessimistic and that new parties – Greens and SNP in particular – needed to be taken at face value and given a fair chance. For disaffected Labour voters, of which there seemed to be a fair number in the room, new, ‘post tribal’ politics promised much needed opportunities for change. For others, however, the old politics of Left and Right had simply given way to a bland politics of consensus where politicians avoided or fudged difficult and potentially divisive issues – how to build economic growth, create employment, whether to further regulate immigration, etc – preferring to steer debate towards a ‘touchy feely’ centre ground.
A number of criticisms were raised against the complacency of the Liverpool Labour ‘establishment’, taking local voters for granted. At the same time some recalled that only a few generations ago Liverpool’s Liberal and Tory safe seats had outnumbered Labour. No vote could be considered ‘wasted’ if radical changes had occurred before and could again. Many were agreed that public disengagement from politics had grown over the last two decades and that this was a problem not only for politicians, but also for society as a whole. Had the people lost confidence in politicians? Or had the politicians given up on the people? It might be the job of politicians to provide leadership and vision, but people can’t simply give up on politics and on each other. Here the discussion returned to the ideas presented in the speakers’ opening remarks: voting is more than simply putting a cross on a ballot paper, it is about expressing choice both through argument and in solidarity with other people in society. There was some lively discussion around the question of what could be done to reinvigorate public engagement, particularly around the issue of teaching citizenship and political engagement in the school curriculum.
Finally, the majority in the room appeared to be committed to voting on 7 May. For some it was an opportunity to shake things up by challenging the complacency of the ‘mainstream’ parties. Others expressed personal loyalty and respect for their local constituency MPs, overriding disappointment and even cynicism about party politics. However some people said they would not be voting, not through lack of interest in politics but because there were no candidates or political parties standing that they could support. In the final analysis, there was a general agreement that voting should remain a voluntary activity and that political participation matters, in the end, because people and democratic rights matter.