You're not AV'in it

By Paul Flower on May 10, 11 11:12 AM

The only thing you need to know about politicians is that they love power, they want you to vote in order to give them power but don't imagine that voting gives you any power at all; they want it all for themselves.

They really love power, like a smoker and the first fag of the day, an addict and the scratch of the needle, premiership footballers and escort girls or pigs wallowing in their own shit. Nothing motivates a politician more than power. They'll do whatever they can to get it, even more to keep it and more still to get more and more of that ego-fulfilling-power.

I thought I'd calmed down after the AV referendum, the vote that never was, but it appears not. Too many rational, intelligent people voted 'no' because the argument was never fairly presented. The people with power and money shouted down the 'yes' campaign and a vote for a fairer system became another fight between them and us with politicians, and the powerful, trying to bend your minds into thinking they were with us and AV would give you a solution you really didn't want.

No-one claimed it was ideal, that opportunity was warped long before the referendum. Little Nicky's tawdry deal with dodgy Dave meant we couldn't have PR - that would be a step too far - instead we can have this half-arsed half-way house that no-one understands and we'll call it the 'alternative'. No alternative, clearly.

For me it was a baby-step towards change but politicians don't want change. Did you really hear them flogging their guts out to support it? I didn't. I didn't even see much of these campaigns that were apparently all over the media.

Instead I saw the scaremongering, the claims that your vote would end up being for something you really didn't want - as if a choice of favourites would ever see your nightmares come true. The truth was that mathematicians couldn't even decide if AV would have made any difference to the last set of election results, no-one really knew but it was at least a chance to say that we're unhappy with the current system - one where the bulk of the vote is not represented by those who gain the power.

Now you wonder why we've only ever had two referendums in this Country? The politicians don't really want to give you the power; they know that your ability to decide will be warped by whoever spends the most on advertising or whoever has the scariest message. You're weak, you don't deserve the power and you'll never get that vote on EU membership that Labour once promised because the politicians know that you'd vote the wrong way. The only referenda you'll ever get are the ones where they know you'll vote their way. Any other way would be giving you too much power and they really don't want that.

This is a blog containing mass generalisations that makes no excuses about offending individuals and casually omitting the random politicians of noble intent. They are so few and far between as to make no difference to the general point of my polemic. I may be cynical but nothing was more cynical than the 'no' campaign in this joke of a referendum.