Electile Dysfunction
The British election unleashed a wave of My Truth. Plus, Wales bans politicians from lying. And a rather delicious recipe for Eton Mess.
Fool Britannia
In his famous psychological study, Solomon Asch asked participants to choose the longest of four straws. Without fail, almost every participant chose the obviously longest straw.
What happened next was inscrutable. When surrounded by a team of paid actors who insisted a shorter straw was the longest straw, almost forty percent of participants changed their minds to fit in with the actors.
Last week's general election plunged large swathes of Great Britain into eerie displays of conformity and self-delusion.
A sober judge would suggest Labour won in a landslide. Keir Starmer's party hoovered up 411 seats from a possible 650. That's a majority of 172—the third largest ever. Meanwhile, the Conservatives fell to just 121 seats. That's their worst-ever result.
Since the exit poll landed on election night, millions of Brits have swirled amidst the various stages of grief. The first stage is denial.
Keir Starmer is our new prime minister. His Labour party ransacked Wales, Scotland, and England. Labour sucked up giant swathes of England. Labour liquidated every Conservative in Wales. Labour reduced the Scottish National Party to a laughable rabble.
Despite such monstrous efficiency on Labour's part, millions insist Labour didn't really win at all.
This 'Potemkin victory' is a 'loveless landslide.' Commentators across the political spectrum worked overtime to bend themselves into mental pretzels.
In the age of My Truth, reality is optional. Fact must not compromise feeling. Reality must not disturb fantasy. Main Character Syndrome swirled in full, sordid swing.
"It's a landslide of seats," opined noted seer Jeremy Corbyn. "Not a landslide of votes."
If my mother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
Many my-truthers skipped denial, plumping heartily for the second stage: anger.
Smeared across the Daily Telegraph were furious screeds foaming in a hydrophobic frenzy. This was not just an election. The end was nigh.
Days before the election, The Telegraph warned that, "Armageddon is upon us, and Britain will never be the same again."
Not to let hyperbole dilute a good sermon, the Conservative party's parish magazine filled the cups at Jonestown.
"The UK is about to enter a nightmare darker than anyone realises," claimed one columnist.
Meanwhile, those whom the rapture left behind dived into the third stage of grief: bargaining.
On Question Time, a current affairs show, independent thought routinely douses itself in petrol, calls its ex-girlfriend, and lights a match.
The panel ummed and ahhed. These very thoughtful people with very independent minds revealed their identical thoughts.
Labour might have won, they claimed. But Keir Starmer's vote share—34 percent—was too low to suggest a mandate. Labour didn't really win. Everyone else merely lost. The Independent Minds permitted Labour to change the curtains in Number Ten. But little beyond that.
This decree from Mount Olympus was a jab of Risperidone into the collective arse of millions whom reality had so rudely disturbed.
Into the soup jumped many of my fellow citizens. The fourth stage of grief is depression.
Under our first-past-the-post electoral system, the winner takes all. Last week's election produced the largest ever gap between votes and seats.
With just over one-third of the votes, Labour devoured two-thirds of the seats in the Commons.
The Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage—finally an MP at the eighth attempt—scored four million votes. Reform got five seats. That's fourteen percent of the vote and under one percent of the seats. Reform bested the Liberal Democrats and got 67 fewer MPs. Depressing. Unless you voted Labour.
A proportional system—which translates votes into seats—would slash Labour in half. The Tories would sit on 156 seats. Another 84 MPs would join Reform's gang of five.
Despite its austere relationship with reality, the Green Party is right to be aggrieved. Under a saner system, the four Green MPs would swell to 45 members. Imagine that. Forty-five members of Parliament all simultaneously smashed on magic mushrooms. Call the Guinness Book of Records.
On the morning after the election, the patent absurdity of our system endured heavy shelling.
The Independent Minds took to social media, to the airwaves, to the television screens. They chanted in unison: 'Something must change. Something will change!'
Reader, something did not change. By lunch, the Independent Minds had abandoned those deeply felt convictions they'd adopted at breakfast.
From Land's End to John O'Groats, a sordid junkie logic reigned. Our problem was not the electoral system, they claimed. Our problem was the results produced by our electoral system. It was like Heroin and Syringe arguing over who was to blame for this poor man's overdose.
It was done. The Independent Minds decreed that our system, flawed though it may be, was the only viable system.
Just one-hundred or so countries use proportional representation. Incidentally, many of those nations are richer, freer, happier, and saner than us. And yet, the thoughtful and independent chimed like cicadas at night.
"Proportional Representation leads to stagnation!"
"Imagine the vitriol…" deigned another.
"And the in-er-shuh."
"We mustn't forget…" said a high priest, his pause more pregnant than a waning reality TV star: "Under PR, nothing gets done."
Apparently, First Past the Post gets things done.
Our system works like so. The Blue Party wins the election on its promise to mop up the piles of vomit the Red Party left behind. After cleaning up pyramids of steaming, carrot-flecked vomit, the Blue Party rewards itself by gorging until it vomits.
Furious and besmirched with vomitus, The People elect the Red Party to clean up the vomit which the Blue Party puked up whilst cleaning up the Red Party's puke. Reader, it's enough to make you bilious.
The final stage of grief is acceptance. Within hours, the Independent Minds had decided that the shortest straw was, in fact, the longest straw.
For Sale: Silent Fire Alarm
The Welsh Government has announced plans to ban politicians from lying.
Breathless proposals revealed by the Labour-led administration will ban members and candidates 'found guilty of deliberate deception.'
With a stroke of the pen, Welsh politicians have solved one problem which has plagued humanity since Ancient Greece.
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