(I don’t think there’s anything left to say about the parties, or the candidates, who stood in that election – but I would like to say congratulations to the Green Party members who turned their backs on an equivocating ‘leader’ and voted on their principles at conference, and solidarity to those citizens of Holburn & St Pancras who keep getting disapproving looks from commentators. Here’s what I think we should be talking about..)

This article is about us, the people of this country. We deserve better, and we need to figure out how to get it. Lots of the articles about the Holburn and St Pancras election mentioned the low turnout, and most followed it up by, one way or another, insulting the 60% or so of the people there who didn’t vote.

In this election, 38.8% of them voted.

In 2024, 54.1% did. In 2019, 66.0%. In 2017, 51.7%. I think that change shows a very important learning process that’s going on everywhere in this country.

Do reporters think 60% of the people of Holburn and St Pancras don’t care, have no sense of responsibility or no hope? I don’t. I think that election result tells us that AT LEAST 60% of those people have brains that work. I think one of the things this country needs more than anything else is for its people to work out that NONE of the politicians we’re offered in MOST elections are any good, and that a lot of them are WORSE than nothing.

None of the above

You can talk forever about vote reform, and which versions of PR have what effect but there’s one thing that would improve our elections enormously – the addition of a binding ‘none of the above’ option. That option, if we had it, would say…

I care. I am not apathetic. I do think about politics. I came out to vote because I have something to say and I think it’s worth saying officially. It is that none of these candidates are worthy of representing me or my town, none of them are capable of doing what’s necessary in this very critical time in our history.

What are politicians for?

They are supposed to represent us in the task of keeping this country running, providing for its people and keeping us safe. Right now, we know that nearly 90% of us are very worried about the climate crisis. Most of us are also very worried about the dangers of war – we disagree (depending which stories we’ve believed) about where the threat of war comes from, but we know that, added to the climate crisis, the ecological and humanitarian disaster that is war makes our future look extremely dodgy. We need politicians who are experienced, grown up, professional, honest administrators and diplomats. We need politicians who will exert themselves in every way possible to stop ALL the wars, because in our current situation, all the wars, wherever they are in the world, and all the weapons and tech industries that drive them, are a direct threat to all of us.

As well as working intelligently to try to stop the wars, the politicians we need would be applying themselves extremely seriously to how on earth we keep this country running, and keep everyone fed, whilst systems are falling apart around our ears.

Apathy and activism

Don’t call the non-voters apathetic. I wonder what proportion of the non-voters are just fed up to the back teeth of being insulted by the poor quality of the candidates offered to them. And I wonder what proportion of those feeling that way have decided to do their politics directly instead of voting. The hundreds of thousands who turned out for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign this weekend showed us that quite a lot are most definitely active, and there are plenty more who do their politics directly with Stop the War, with Save our NHS, or one of the many organizations that spend their time and resources supporting the poor, the homeless, and refugees, or trying to protect our environment from the terrible harms that corporations and ‘developers’ are constantly trying to inflict.

And I bet quite a few of the people who did vote last week are activists too – but they decided, rather than not voting at all, to turn up and vote for the least dreadful candidate on offer, perhaps to defend their town from another, particularly awful candidate.

Responsible people

I think what our politics needs now, above absolutely everything else, is for more of us to realize that going out to vote is a tiny and trivial item on the list of what you can usefully do in politics and at the same time, to realize that the politicians on offer are not leaders, that in fact leaders are not what we need — they won’t save us.

What can you do, other than vote? Think, read, discuss, learn, and do your politics directly by joining a campaign you believe in. Big campaign groups like the PSC influence politics a lot. The heroic exertions of thousands of (mostly retired) citizens currently facing charges of terrorism have definitely influenced politics – both in terms of telling the government we won’t tolerate genocide and in helping that most excellent organisation Defend our Juries to keep the pressure on those politicians who thought they could get away with destroying our judicial system. Trade Unions still influence politics a bit – but they can’t do as much as they once did – and they won’t, unless a lot more people join their unions, get active, and drag those unions where they need to go.

A quick reminder of a film from the last century….

So if you hear anyone insulting all the people who didn’t vote in Holburn and St Pancras, please point out to them that our political system and most of our politicians are useless and therefore our voting cards are useless. We need to get over the wish for magic leaders, and put our faith in ourselves and our communities.

Let’s remember, the only thing Brewster did wrong in that glorious film was accidentally become the most popular candidate. If we really had ‘none of the above’ on our voting cards, and if ‘none of the above’ won the election, the electoral commission should respect that, and call another election — when and if alternative candidates offered themselves to the constituency.

I’m as sure as I can be that a binding ‘none of the above’ option would generate a far, far higher turnout at every election. wouldn’t the option to say ‘no’ have got you revved up, last time you looked at a candidate list and sighed…

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