Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

The first General Election I could vote in was 2001. I voted for Labour, then Tony Blair went all Henry Kissinger in 2003.

Despite this the dangled carrot of Scottish Independence has kept me engaged. Until now. With no prospect of Scottish Independence on the horizon, and the almost certain continuation of fourteen years of Tory austerity, I’m not going to vote next week.

Little doubt there’ll be nerdy political types or po-faced tossers who’ll construe my stance as apathetic and sneer at it. But, let me be clear, my new state of passivity is not cynical. I’ve just looked at all the parties that I’m eligible to vote for in Glasgow West, and I don’t want to vote for any of them. It has the same appeal as choosing how you want to be tortured to death.

Voting against the Reform candidate is a motivation I can understand, but also a waste of time. In the context of this election the pound-shop Trumpian huckster Nigel Farage and Reform offer a nasty paradox – voting against them for the vacant, ineffectual political class will only ensure nothing changes, and in the long run Mr. Brexit will get more attention and his alternative “vision” will gain support. It isn’t just his dog-whistle jingoism or racism that’s damaging, it’s that he and it have been emboldened by a top-down client media obsessed with his cause célèbre, positing the debate around immigration (there’s been an equally stupid conflation between people seeking asylum or arriving on work visas, and people entering illegally) as primarily responsible for economic stagnation.

Meanwhile the real cause of increasing poverty, growing wealth inequality, remains underexamined. So, while the rich quietly hoard all the country’s assets Farage plays fash court jester as a welcome distraction for that and the government being broke, public services and local councils being desperately underfunded, interest rates and inflation remaining high, meanwhile the tax burden is placed on working folk. Few in the mainstream political bubble seem willing or capable of examining the correlation, mainly because they’re insulated from the worst of it by their relative affluence.

But people haven’t lost patience just because things are shit. It’s that combined with there being no tangible path to a positive alternative that’s so demoralizing. Nobody is offering a cluster of realistic or optimistic policies that will fix the economy and arrest the serious decline in public services.

Look at the choices – the Tories, now down to the dregs after years of dysfunction and a visible contempt for public service, have been doubly stupid in demonising immigrants. They’re not as extreme as Reform, and having been in power have, depending on your perspective, a terrible record on net migration and “stopping the boats”. As per usual they’re offering more austerity for everyone except the rich and the worst demographic in society – boomer homeowners (and even they might not vote for them).

Labour have reverted back to the plutocratic Nu-Labour of Tony Blair (taking the coin of despots to help with their PR), Peter Mandelson (Jeffrey Epstein’s mate) and Alastair Campbell (not a friend of Dr David Kelly’s family) and are also giving you cuts galore – though not quite as many as the Conservatives. But what rankles is they’re disingenuously making out they have to stick to their “fiscal rules”, which is a euphemistic rebranding for austerity. They’re hoping for significant GDP growth in a country that no longer produces anything and has isolated itself from its closest trading bloc. “Sir” Keir Starmer, despite flip-flopping on as many policy pledges as necessary to ascend to power, has been categorical about not rejoining the European customs union in the next parliament (let’s hope his penchant for pathological lying applies here).

I have little doubt they’ll build more houses than the Tories have done, and offer greater protections for renters, but if this isn’t done in concert with significant wealth taxes and tax reforms it won’t stop house prices (and rents) rising well above real term wages. Wes Streeting (who has Blairite cunt encoded in his DNA) is gagging to siphon off more of the NHS to his corporate bottom feeder benefactors. They’ll win a majority, possibly a handsome one, but will soon become immensely unpopular because they’re offering repetitive, ineffectual, unimaginative policies.

What about the others then? If you vote for Reform you’re a racist or thick to believe their spiel. How about as a protest vote? Do something constructive and join a fucking union instead you cunt.

And then there’s the SNP, the party that was formed to gain Scottish independence but now has no interest in achieving it or clue how to. The leadership is also riddled with accusations of financial corruption and cronyism. Wee Jimmy Krankie, aka Nicola Sturgeon, and her gobshite husband blew it, and it’s still not clear why they had to steer the ship towards the iceberg or buy that ridiculously expensive campervan.

The Lib Dems? They’re just…there, occasionally noticed, as you would a mangy pigeon pecking away at a pool of dried human vomit on the pavement. The Greens? At least they’re offering a real alternative to austerity by proposing wealth taxes. But it’s hard to take their long-term chances of becoming an electoral force seriously. The UK is conservative on social issues but the Greens are in the thrall of woke ideology. On a practical level their stance on nuclear power is so naïve that it’s an insult to children to call it childish.

“It’s a shite state of affairs” to quote Renton in Trainspotting. So, I’ll make this prediction – the turnout will be the lowest it’s been since Blair’s second win in 2001. The Tories have worn patience in politics thin and Labour will be swiftly punished for not being radical enough.

But voters shouldn’t blame non-voters like me or vice-versa. The political class’s complacency is to blame, in thinking enriching themselves by serving the needs of the few and there being no consequences for failing to serve the public need for decades would last indefinitely.

What comes after a Labour government in four or five years will be ugly and makes me seriously consider emigrating. The lyrics to God Save The Queen by The Sex Pistols look quite prophetic to me:

God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb

God save the queen
She’s not a human being
and There’s no future
And England’s dreaming

Don’t be told what you want
Don’t be told what you need
There’s no future
No future
No future for you

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
‘Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid

Oh when there’s no future
How can there be sin
We’re the flowers
In the dustbin
We’re the poison
In your human machine
We’re the future
Your future

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
We mean it man
There’s no future
In England’s dreaming God save the queen

No future
No future
No future for you

No future
No future
No future for me

No future
No future
No future for you