Britain’s two party system has been smashed wide open. But mindless party drones won’t be switching their vote, writes Eamonn Dwyer.

It’s election time, and the sweaty palms of party hacks are grappling over the joystick of power. Billboards have turned up at the roadsides, canvassers at the doorsteps, to awaken the party faithful. Like hypnotically activated sleeper agents, millions of these zombie voters will swarm at the polling stations, before returning to their suburban dens.

If prodded, they might be able to provide soundbites memorised from party propaganda, but there is no real sentience behind their sentences; it is all sentiment. They don’t need to know what the issues are, or who the candidates are, or what the other parties are offering. They just need an electoral card and a gentle nudge to punch in their vote for the party.

These ballot buffoons act more like football fans than dutiful democrats. They follow the waxing and waning of their favourite party’s fortunes with a listless sports fan’s loyalty. No matter how badly treated they are, no matter how ignored, they still turn up to sign off.

And like football fans, if their team is performing so abysmally even they can’t stomach the stamp of approval, they would rather not show up than switch sides.

It might make sense for the beautiful game, but it’s a cancer on the body politic. It turns vast swathes of the voting public into irrelevancies. Instead of parties of the people, we have manifestos of the marginals, in which focus groups fashion policy.

One reason the North has got a raw deal under Labour is because of its unswerving loyalty to the party in red. As any experienced lover will tell you, the more you can bank on your doey-eyed partner’s devotion, the more badly you can treat them.

If northern voters behaved like prim whores with their ballot, they would have found Blair sweating bullets over how to turn out the Liverpool vote, rather than siding against the dockers as a symbolic gesture of loyalty to his Southern middle class base.

As soliloquising junkie Renton observed in Trainspotting, the racist, lady-glassing Begbie is a ‘total psycho, but he’s a mate, so what can yo do?’

But with the rise of Nick Clegg and the electorate’s realisation that the Liberal Democrats are in the running, and not just also-rans, this general election is one of the most open in decades. The Tories are warning of economic apocalypse in the event of a hung parliament; the Lib Dems prefer to gloss it as a ‘balanced parliament’ (I would have preferred ‘well hung parliament’).

Will Clegg and Cable sitting in the cabinet revolutionise British politics? Of course not. Their manifesto is right of centre, and distinctly orthodox. It might be more populist than the Tories’ and Labour’s, but this election is no longer about the economy, the environment, or the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, or anything else; it’s about electoral reform which will smash Britain’s cosy Thatcherite consensus.

If the Lib Dems get a foot in the door, there is a reasonable chance of passing AV plus, a PR-lite voting system that will give small parties a chance and may end the days of big majority rule. It was recommended to the Labour government by ‘Lord’ Jenkins in 1998, but scenting a decade in power through the old system, Tony Blair quietly buried Labour’s manifesto pledge for a referendum on the issue.

First Past the Post is not fit for purpose. In the 2005 general election, the Liberal Democrats received 22.6 per cent of the vote. Yet they only won 9.6 per cent of the seats in parliament.

Independent candidates and parties are locked out, while New Labour and the Conservatives try to mask their ideological kinship from a scundered electorate under a slew of slogans.

A ‘well hung’ parliament would not just mean more independents and small parties – it would allow the decent Labour members of the house to undercut the establishment whip.

After two decades of reactionary ruler by free market nutters, this may be our last chance for a reformed parliament. As former Sun editor David Yelland put it in The Guardian, this election threatens to decapitate the media elite and political establishment.

What can you do at the ballot box to bring about this change?

What I’m going to suggest, is a practical, balls on the wall strategy for not wasting your vote, or at least wasting it in a useful way.

I will assume you’re like the average voter, and are more likely to vote Green than any other party if you thought they had a chance of winning or really knew how much you agreed with the policies.

Go to www.election-maps.co.uk, click on ‘postcode search’ and enter your postcode to get your Westminster constituency name, then feed it into Wikipedia to look up the result at the last election (hat tip: Rene Lavanchy).

If you’re in a safe Tory or Labour or Liberal Democrat seat, vote Lib Dem. Your vote might not count, but it will be counted. In the event of a hung parliament, the real possibility of the Lib Dems topping the poll in number of votes but coming third in number of seats would provide a massive impetus for electoral reform.

If you’re in a seat with strong competition between Labour and the Lib Dems, find out which candidate is a member of progressive cross-party political bloc Compass and vote accordingly.If there is a chance of the Tories taking advantage of the split, vote for the most-likely non-Tory candidate.

In all other circumstances, vote against the Tory incumbent. If you’re in Northern Ireland, vote against the Tory/Unionist block, even if that means voting for former murder apologists Sinn Fein.

One exception; if you’re lucky enough to live in Brighton Pavilion, vote for Caroline Lucas.

This may be Britain’s last chance for electoral reform. When it comes to voting on May 6th, don’t be a drone; even if that means voting for Lib Dem drips, Labour scumbags and Sinn Fein shooters.

Sometimes in a democracy you’ve got to be an absolute whore.

eamonn.dwyer83@gmail.com
http://www.twitter.com/eamonndwyer