Maybe we should change the way we vote...?

I've always been paying half-ish attention to British politics, even though I have no influence on it and it barely any on me.

Frankly, it was always just too dull. The whole parliament questions and traditions and arguing about tax reform... yadda yadda. Over the years, things got a little more interesting as our Western society as a whole started to get more divisive and I started to... find my voice in this world as to who I am and where I stand on things, beyond that which is stated to me as 'correct'.

As I learnt more through YouTube, whether it's scientific, ecological, journalistic, historical or more, I simply gained a more inquisitive mind. So I guess it seems reasonable that I started to pay more attention to British Politics, even though it was far more boring than US politics with the whole Obama being black thing, then this Trump demon possessing the government, woke ideology started to kick into mainstream gear and so on.

Then, Boris Johnson came into power. Good old BJ. He made things a lot more interesting. Everybody kinda liked him because of his 'silliness'. This was by design, we all know, to distract us and allow us to be far more forgiving for his blunders and scandals than we otherwise would be. Even though we knew, it still worked for most of his career, as PM, as Mayor of London, and even before that.

That is until of course Party Gate + 19 other scandals all came into force simultaneously. Suddenly, all his woeful attempts at fixing the country's economy and other issues seemed less forgivable as he was being slayed by media left, right and centre, a stern reminder that he was actually quite useless.

There's no doubt he is highly educated, but nonetheless, useless.

His party is not much better either. As Brexit kicked in and the British government was left on its lonesome, we saw cracks and panic almost at the speed the fiber-optic cables could send the information to us. It was almost as if they barely had a clue what they were doing for decades, as the EU just kind of babysat and micromanaged them since the 70's.

I was never really sure on my stance on Brexit, and I'm still not sure on my political leanings. I think an increasing number of us Brits look at both sides and think 'get me off this planet' - there really is no decent choice. You might like one leader or the other, but the snide, sneaky, backstabbing, dishonest MPs skulking in the shadows behind are nobody you want dictating anything about your lives, and no alternative seems suitable either, even if they were able to take leadership from the two main parties (this is more likely in the UK than the US, especially if you include coalitions between two).

So this got me thinking. Why are we increasingly unable to vote for anything we like? I know that democracy is flawed, and almost deliberately forces society into picking 'the lesser of two evils' rather than one you actually like, but this just seems wrong.

Fun fact, I've never voted in my life. I left the UK after graduation, and was not at all politically engaged when so young, and I've been abroad ever since. But I am politically engaged nonetheless.

Until recently, I always followed the same kind of practice everybody does when considering who to vote for: Who do I like, who has the policies that are best for me?

Of course we all consider the nation as a whole too, but its always with a little tinge of 'me' in there. For example, we want the NHS to be better, as we scream with rage and despair that people are dying after waiting 15 hours for an ambulance. Underneath all that, we just want to be sure we get access to healthcare when we need it.

We welcome all immigrants, sure with the intent to be kind to outsiders, but really, we just want to make ourselves feel virtuous. Now we can pat each other on the back knowing we voted to save the immigrants from war-torn countries.

Call me a cynic if you like, but it's no secret that it's human nature to look out for number 1, and it therefore suggests our voting behaviour is no different. Since we all also agree that humans are flawed beings, can we perhaps accept that it is not democracy that is solely flawed here, but us?

More specifically, the way we think about voting should probably be reconsidered - at least for a while. A few months ago, tired of the Tory party, tired of the Labour party, I started to reflect on how these leaders are doing according to their own party agenda as it should be.

For example, the Tories are conservative, and therefore they should be practicing conservative agendas. Labour are described as centre-left. So it seems the leaders - Boris Johnson for the Tories as of today (probably Sunak in the near future), and Keir Starmer for Labour - should endeavour to reflect that as accurately as possible.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could all cast our votes based on each leaders' ability to, well, do their jobs properly, rather than what we personally want and need?

For example, you could be a screaming tanky on the terrifying far left. Perhaps you want communism but done properly this time according to how I think it would work, not how Mao, Kim, Stalin or Ho Chi Minh did it!. Well, there is no prominent communist leader in the UK so you might want to go for Labour instead which is where these politically homeless dump themselves into.

Now, what if, instead of trying to enforce change into communism from the inside as you are currently doing, how about you look at Keir Starmer and ask if he is accurately doing his job according to centre left policies? Sure it's not what you personally want, doesn't go nearly far enough, but it does determine whether or not he is a competent leader.

Is that not what we need most of all, competence? Your contradictory utopian goals are not remotely close to anything a centre-left party should be pandering to, so you could simply vote for competence or join one of the tiny irrelevant parties and try to make it relevant.

Well, what if the Labour leader is utterly useless at achieving that Centre-left ideology? Could we look at the Tory Leader? What if it turns out Sunak is an incredibly adept politician with strong policies on conservative ideas without any scary Far Right extremism sneaking through?

Wouldn't it be interesting if you saw that competency as far beyond that of the Labour, and voted for the conservative party based on merit?

It seems kinda stupid suggesting people on the far left vote for people on the right or vice versa, but the more we vote based on competency, the more competent the leaders become. Remember, we're all suffering from a very fractured, infected and infested political system right now, far worse than decades prior.

This idea isn't exactly meant as a permanent solution, but perhaps a healing process to reduce that extreme division we're seeing all over. In the USA, the division between parties is so extreme that left and right-wing people won't even consider being friends with one from the other side regardless of any other personality trait they may have in common, and anyone red visiting a blue state or vice versa feel the need to hide themselves at risk of being called out and beaten up by their enemies surrounding them at every corner. Numerous states are discussing secession, and most people think civil war between the two sides is just around the corner..

Are Americans really so different from state to state that a literal war is necessary to kill off and imprison those you disagree with?

We did this to ourselves of course (well I didn't - I don't vote. It's all y'all's fault), and it will continue in that direction for the foreseeable future probably until an international war kicks in and we're forced to work together after we see half our family members blown up, but there are ways to fix it, and I believe it starts at the voting booth. I just don't think we're doing it right according to the times we're living in.

We need to vote with reparations in mind. Vote for competency, and this will ultimately get the economic systems and infrastructures more in line with what it should be. social policies are secondary and we can consider those later when everyone can agree that the country is 'doing alright' (nobody wants a utopia, trust me).

Democracy is dying all over the world. All but a few countries claim to be democratic, but few actually are, and in terms of population, people living in functioning democracies are by far and away in the minority.

Wiki

---

Boris Johnson is incompetent, as is Joe Biden in the US. But to most people, they were voted in to 'get brexit done', or simply to get Trump out of office - something the majorities personally wanted. They also voted them because it meant not having the opposite party in power. Again, a selfish desire.

It didn't take long for the mistakes in those choices to come to fruition, and yet we don't seem capable of learning from those mistakes, probably because we can't seem to identify what the mistakes actually are. We all blame the parties for being shite. But let's be honest - you're the problem, and so am I.