As we all pretty much expected, there’s been no clear winner in the British general election. This isn’t news.

Nor is it news that almost nobody voted for the Liberal Democrats – as I pointed out in my previous election post, Nick Clegg is a non-entity, despite the media claiming he was having a ‘massive surge’ in popular support following the Prime Ministerial debates (odd, considering he came across like he was animated by Terry Nation).

We still don’t really know who is going to be in charge in the long run, but whatever happens (coalition, minority government etc.) we’re going to have a pretty well-balanced parliament. The sort of thing that doesn’t lead to a strong, decisive government – which the political pundits on the news haven’t stopped bemoaning – but which does lead to some pretty good democracy in general.

I mean, obviously I’d rather have absolutely anyone as PM rather than minge-faced arsehole David Cameron, but if he does end up in charge at least his power will be mitigated. And the Tories won’t be able to pass their suicidally insane economic policies. Or their ‘free Bentley for everyone who owns a top hat’ policy.

Dissenting voices in government is a good thing, is what I’m saying. You don’t get one party bulldozing its shitty ideas through parliament, and they all have to argue about things a lot more (which is the entire point of parliamentary democracy, after all).

Take the EU – MEPs spend years arguing about pointless minutiae, and long may it continue. If they ever agreed about anything, the European Union would be the single most terrifying entity on the face of the Earth.

So, hung Parliament = good for democracy.

But what isn’t good for democracy is the way we somehow couldn’t manage to run a fucking election in the first place. People should not have been turned away from polling stations because the queues ran on too long (in Manchester, London, Birmingham, Newcastle and Sheffield). Polling stations should not run out of ballot papers (in Chester and Liverpool), or miss hundreds of people off the electoral register (Chester again).

Disenfranchised voters are not something we should have in Britain. We’re a first world nation. We’ve exported Parliamentary Democracy to half the world (often to nations who weren’t exactly 100% eager to jump on board) – it would be nice if we could get it right ourselves. It rather steps on our point if we fuck it all up.

It’s also notable that the areas which have turned away voters were all inner-city areas, so not only are we disenfranchising British citizens, but we’re doing exclusively to those who are less well-off.

The ballot workers (and others) are blaming about our ‘antiquated’ system – but the reality is that we have had higher turnouts in previous years with none of these problems. It’s sheer fucking incompetence, and it’s shameful that this sort of thing can happen in Britain.

Posted by Dave in Politics (7/05/2010 at 16:49).
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