Some Election Musings

 

Let’s start with some quirky facts about this election that have been doing the rounds: 

1} With a turnout of just under 60%, over 17 million eligible voters did not participate, which is almost twice the number of Labour voters. 

2} Labour secured only about 33% of the popular vote, yet won around 66% of the seats in Parliament, whereas the Conservatives received about 28% of the vote but got annihilated. 

3} Reform UK received 4 million votes (about 10% of the vote) but only secured 4 seats, while the Liberal Democrats secured only 3.4 million votes (around 8.5%) but won 69 seats. 

4} Because of the disproportionality of the electoral voting system, Labour's huge majority allows them to govern our nation despite fewer than 20% of the eligible electorate voting for them. 

5} Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour of 2019 gained a greater share of the vote and lost, with Keir Starmer’s Labour of 2024 gaining a smaller share of the vote and winning. 

It’s clear that Labour didn’t win this election so much as the Tories lost it. A significant proportion of the Labour votes were more concerned with getting the Tories out than they were excited about Labour governing under the leadership of serial bullshi**er Keir Starmer. The combined Tory/Reform vote was roughly similar to the combined Labour vote, where the latter greatly came out on top because we have a voting system that produces big victories when the opposition vote is divided. 

It’s perhaps especially noteworthy here that neither of the main parties fought this election on the values for which they used to stand, and both are currently fairly indistinguishable in mutually standing for big state, high tax, over-regulation, eco-fanatical, freedom-restricting, wokeist principles. For someone with my political values, I feel the Tories deserved to lose, but Labour didn’t deserve to win, which leaves a sense of foreboding for people who haven’t been seduced by the empty promises, taken in by the lies, and been enmeshed in the ever-knottier net of institutional thrall and systemic entrenchment. 

And to those who have built a profile around hating the opposition, I’d say that it’s unwise, because being on either extreme of the left vs. right divide is so inadequate to the task of reflecting the true complexities of something like a human society. A country needs and is built on conservative values to conserve the best values in society, and also requires liberal values to challenge the status quo, employ creative inputs, and help us evolve and improve. 

Conservative values play a crucial role in preserving the best aspects of society, such as Judeo-Christian truths, market qualities, innovation, self-determination, personal responsibility, traditions, cultural heritage, and other established institutions that have withstood the test of time. And liberal values are also essential for driving social, economic, and political progress. They encourage adaptability, enabling society to evolve in response to changing circumstances and emerging challenges. A thriving society like the UK will always function with both those qualities at work, harnessing both conservative and liberal values to maintain stability while promoting progress. 

So, it’s a big problem that the Conservative party no longer resembles the party with conservative values. They no longer have a coherent sense of continuity and identity, and they no longer offer a foundation upon which communities can build and thrive. Equally, Labour used to be the party of the working class – but it’s working-class people who are most crippled by Labour’s descent into over-regulation, Net Zero madness and increasing wokeness. 

Consequently, political commentary that pits one side as promoting evil values, and the other as the solution to counter evil, is just not doing the subject justice, or promoting the kind of thoughtful dialogue required to engage in healthy political discourse – especially given that the values on which they used to be divided have been eroded away within both parties respectively. 

But, alas, I suspect the same story will be told, whoever is in power – people will remain wedded to a tribalistic mentality, where most of the good/bad things done by the party(ies) they support and the party(ies) to which they’re hostile are seen through the lens of individual confirmation bias. It’s a very impoverishing way to do politics; seize on the opponents’ errors and ignore what they do well, and capitalise on the preferred party’s strengths and ignore what they do badly – but humans are primed to be that way. 

The best way to successfully defuse conflict in the world is not to be preoccupied with difference and division, but to encourage intellectual freedom, trade and competition, and celebration of assimilation and the ways in which we are similar with shared goals and common human properties. The political system, in its current incarnation, is not fit for purpose in achieving these aims, and in many cases only pretends to want to do so. 

Party politics aside, the old wisdom still holds, and probably always will; if we want material prosperity, we must promote freer trade; if we want better ideas, we should strive for more intellectual freedom; if we want kinder societies, we should work harder to love; and if we want justice, we should seek the truth.

If We Don't Choose Our Beliefs, How Can We Be Compelled To Believe?

 

A philosopher FB friend of mine wrote this provocative post that seemed to get a lot of positive feedback: 

“If it's true that beliefs are caused rather than chosen, then the idea in Christian theology that the only thing a person can do in order to be saved is believe that Christ died for their sins etc - which presumes people can choose what to believe, then that entire line of thinking is incoherent. You'll need to rethink Christianity and we'll have to rethink these philosophies, but what we can't do is defiantly cling to an idea that is almost certainly false.”

But I don’t think it’s right, so here is my brief take on it, which may be of interest to some:

I don’t think it’s quite right to say “that Christian doctrine is incoherent if we don’t choose our beliefs” – I think it’s more involved than that. I think it’s correct that beliefs are caused rather than chosen, and also correct that the only thing a person can do in order to be saved is believe that Christ is Lord, died for our sins, and so forth. But that doesn’t mean we “need to rethink Christianity”, because beliefs, causes and commitments are more complicated than that.

Because, although we don’t choose our beliefs, we do influence what we go on to believe by our actions and influences, and we increase or decrease the probability of belief based on the decisions we make. For example, an insecure hermit may not currently believe that there is much value for them in experiencing travel. At point 1, they could not choose to believe in the value of travel. But with a series of micro-steps, they might find after a while their confidence has increased to the level that they have started to enjoy their trips, and eventually they may even reach a place where they value being well-travelled beyond their wildest expectations.

Similarly, while we can’t choose to accept Jesus if our current state is one of unbelief, we can make decisions and undertake a series of micro-steps (pray, read the Bible, go to church, aim for higher goodness, practice deeper forgiveness, read Christian theology, etc) that gradually lead us to belief, where at an earlier point on the journey we weren’t able to believe.