| During the elections for the current student
union exec, I overheard two girls reading the
election pledges of Treasurer elect Michael
Britland. One of them commented that he studied
politics, they both laughed and moved on. I
imagine their votes going elsewhere. They weren’t
laughing at Michael like I do; because he’s
a funny guy. They weren’t laughing at him
doing English or Maths or History. It was
politics that they took exception to. Responses
to the news that I really quite like politics
is invariably negative; ‘How can you? It’s
so boring!’. This is my response, and my
desperation at the popular perception of
government.
In
‘The Republic’, Plato sets out his
vision for the perfect state/country. As part of
this he explains why he is opposed to democracy.
To cut a long story short, he sees democratic
leaders as weak because they simply give people
what they want in order to maintain power, and
that people elect bad leaders because; 1) they
don’t understand the issues and 2) they want
the person who gives them simple answers that
seem to work in their favour - they choose the
weakest leader possible! Ultimately, Plato
claims, democracy leads to the breakdown of
society since liberty becomes the most important
issue to the individual. Permissiveness abounds
and the whole thing goes to pot.
It
is easy to dismiss these criticisms as thousands
of years out of date. In truth, they may well be
coming back to haunt us. I believe that one of
the key reasons for the lack of interest and
confidence in the political system is a lack of
knowledge (go on then, who is the Home Secretary?
What does CND stand for? What is the difference
between the European Council, Commission and
Parliament? Mind you, if you’ve got this
far, you’ll probably know!). US Senator Dan
Quayle once said that; ‘A low voter turnout
is an indicator of fewer people going to the
polls.’ That isn’t at all funny unless
you blatantly obvious it is, and how stupid it
sounds coming from a man who was formerly one of
the most powerful in the world. (Quayle’s
quotes are infamous for their unintended humour.
After returning from a trip to Latin America, he
remarked; ‘the only regret I have is that I
didn’t study Latin harder at school so I
could converse with those people’!)
The
danger of this huge lack of knowledge is that
Plato’s vision of democracy become reality.
We elect weak leaders because we don’t
understand that complex issues can require
complex answers, that what seem on face value to
be best for us as individuals isn’t
necessarily so. We vote with entirely selfish and
base motivation. The result? Simple answers that
don’t work in reality, a society that fails.
And it’s no use saying that you can leave it
to the politicians because ‘they know what
they’re doing’. When was the last time
the phrase ‘trust me, I’m a politician’
was used in earnest? If you don’t trust
politicians, that is all the more reason to
challenge them, to take an interest in the
issues, to form opinions based on knowledge
rather than emotion.
At
the next general election, a large proportion of
us will be eligible to vote. I certainly urge
everyone entitled to do so. But I also urge you
to consider exactly who you are voting to and why.
Voting is easy. Voting the wrong person into
power is a mistake which is difficult to correct.
Furthermore,
as your nice short sound bite answer to why
politics isn’t boring, it is fundamentally
based around people and power. We have an innate
interest in both. If we continue to treat it with
contempt, to treat it as irrelevant, we are
making a very grave mistake.
Christopher Read
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