For the first time in some years, I’m going to vote in a national election. As some of you may have gathered, Bush’s cute little poodle will be asking for some more doggie biscuits later this week. But he’s not sitting up on his hind legs and making sad little puppy eyes – oh no! Like any faithful hound, he saves that for his Imperial Master. What we get is a poodle’s attempt to growl and snarl.
“My dog biscuits,” he cries, “Mine.”
“Don’t give them to the Golden Retriever. If you do, that nasty old pit bull will get them.”
“My dog biscuits. All for me.”
I take a look at that pit bull terrier, and there’s no doubt it’s a nasty beast, slavering and drooling at the end of its chain. It’s already promised that it will play “Fetch” for its Master every bit as well as that fluffy toy poodle. And when it’s not playing “Fetch,” it’ll be running around loose on the streets, biting babies and savaging pensioners. Not to mention its cheerful rampages in the park with those Alsatians from the BNP.
Choices, choices.
Let me tell you about the first ever election I voted in. It was in New Zealand and I was 19, going on 20. There had just been three disastrous years of National Party Government – doesn’t the very name tell you everything you need to know? The first female prime minister had repealed pay equity legislation. They had gutted the unions with the 1990 Employment Contracts Act. They had played `fetch’ for their Imperial Master in the Persian Gulf. But for me the legacy of that National government was also more immediate. Friends who came too close to death from meningitis – and in one case, scarlet fever – because they put off going to doctors that they couldn’t afford. Another who miscarried because, unbeknownst to us, she didn’t have enough money for food. The consequences of overcrowding, poverty and `user-pays’ when you don’t have anything to pay with – that’s what I remember the National Party for.
Simple choice, right? Vote Labour. But for the six years prior to the National government’s election in 1990, the Labour government had been metaphorically crapping on the carpet and pissing on the sofa. They’d sold off every public asset they could find – railways, forestry, fisheries, telecoms, you name it, they sold it. They made it harder for people to get an education. They introduced user-pays health care, with the result that the rich stayed healthy while the sick stayed poor. Gosh. What a surprise. Who’d have thought?
Ironically, their one saving grace was that they were bad dogs in every respect. And when Imperial Master `Gipper’ said “Here doggy dog! Nice dog! We’ve got a nuclear ship for you! What a good dog!” they ceased crapping on the carpet just long enough to chomp on his leg instead. Thus New Zealand became nuclear free – an imperial province in revolt. It was a pretty substantial saving grace, really.
So what to do? I wanted National out. Desperately. But I didn’t trust Labour as far as I can spit. And I’m hopeless at spitting – on the rare occasions I try, it’s more of a dribble.
My flatmates advocated voting Alliance – a leftist splinter party that broke away from Labour in its neo-liberal phase. No surprise there – one was active in the Alliance party and another was thoroughly pissed off with the Labour Party’s betrayals. I liked the Alliance a lot – I liked their policies and I liked their potential to break the two-party stranglehold on power.
But I really wanted National out. And so in the end, I succumbed to the politics of expediency and voted Labour even though I knew that the Alliance was what I wanted. I’ve never been terribly happy with that decision. National won. By the time they finally lost power in 1999, I’d left the country.
Since then, I’ve grown much wearier and warier of the politics of expediency. Strategic voting – choosing the lesser of two evils – is all very well if you’re utilitarian. But I’m not, or at least, I try not to be. And in my old age I’ve become obstinate enough to want choices that aren’t evil. Sooner or later, you have to say what you want.
There’s no doubt that in working-class towns like the one where I live, Labour has done a lot of good. None. Unemployment has gone down a lot here. Kids get to go to Sure-Start programmes that help them get ready for school. The library is excellent – lots of computers and free computer courses. Some of you here may have heard about my wonderful experiences with the NHS – and no, I’m not being sarcastic. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. But if the price is the Iraq that RubDMC has documented, indefinite detentions and the current inhumane `policies’ towards asylum seekers – all of which my local Labour MP supports – then I won’t pay it. You can’t purchase your freedom with someone else’s captivity. It doesn’t work that way. And given the value I place on my own freedom of movement, how can I vote for a government that deports so many, and makes even successful asylum seekers wait five years before granting them permanent residence? How can I vote for the occupation of Iraq? Why would I vote for my imperial masters? From where I stand, a vote for Blair looks an awful lot like a vote for Bush.
But what about that evil pit bull? What if by voting Green or LibDem (my two front-runners at present) I let in the Tories – who are even worse on Iraq and openly racist when it comes to issues surrounding immigration. Arguably, Blair’s lies about Iraq demonstrate a rudimentary awareness that he was doing something that he should feel ashamed about: Howard knows no shame. Shouldn’t I just put on that clothes-peg grit my teeth and vote Labour?
In New Zealand, my decision to vote tactically made no difference: National won and the years that followed were predictably awful. But what would have happened had Labour won that year? Michael Moore (the guy who went on to become Director General of the WTO – not the film maker) was still the leader of the Labour Party – he would have become Prime Minister again. How then would Labour have learned that neo-liberalism was unviable? The gains that have been made there over the last six years under a real Labour government would never have taken place, because New Zealand would still be without a real Labour party.
Counterfactuals. We can’t know. Which is another reason why I’m not convinced that utilitarianism is a sound basis for political action.