Churchill’s old maxim, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” certainly has an element of truth to it; and perhaps more so, if the voter in question happens to live in Wellingborough. For that’s what we witnessed during the more pertinent of last Thursday’s by-elections, whereby the weary right-of-centre vote not only refused to show up for the incumbent Tories, but failed to take a chance on popular Reform UK candidate, Ben Habib.
A cursory analysis of the vote leaves little doubt on the matter: Labour did not ‘win’ the seat in the traditional sense of overturning an 18,500-strong majority – indeed, Keir’s candidate barely managed to add 100 votes to the party’s tally from 2019. Instead, the Tory vote simply refused to turn out – 32,000+ reduced to just over 7,000, with a mere 4,000 voting Reform.
As The New Conservative argued last week, the scenario was about as ripe as it’s ever going to get for Richard Tice’s insurgent party: the Tories are in turmoil, the official opposition is Starmer not Blair, and Reform’s national polling is currently riding the crest of a wave. The odds could only feasibly have been improved, had Nigel Farage himself stood in as candidate; healthily endorsed by a Lambert & Butler in one hand, and a Gordon’s Gin in the other.
To say the results are disappointing would be an understatement. Naturally, the movers and shakers at Reform have attempted to spin it positively – 13% of the vote is, after all, a dramatic improvement on past by-election showings, and ahead of the party’s projected national vote share, but it’s hardly the two-horse race we were promised between Labour and Reform. This however is surely not an indictment of Reform UK, but of the electorate itself – the desultory 38% that bothered to turn out, that is.
What exactly were the small ‘C’ conservative voters waiting for? No one outside the Bone family could have had the slightest reason to vote Tory – the party had zero chance of winning the seat – and yet, well over 8,000 voters signed up to Sunak’s sunken ship. Why? Blind loyalty? The fact is, as Britain crumbles around us, if you’re a genuine conservative, voting Tory now makes about as much sense as voting Labour if you’re a Jew. Perhaps it’s testament to just how far the Conservative Party has drifted to the left that Keir Starmer is not perceived to be as considerable a threat as Corbyn was, but that’s a desperate state of affairs.
As for the 7,000 strong party faithful, precisely which aspect of Tory competence were they rewarding with their ‘X’ on Thursday? Was it the gayification of our armed forces? Or the war on white men, which stops just short of refusing their conscription and death in the event of a lovely war? Was it the bankrupting of the nation for a disease so mild, those in charge couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to wear masks for? Was it Net Zero nincompoopery, the surrender to Islam, or the foisting of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bullshit upon us all? Was it the failure to police terrorists, the scourge of knife crime, or simply the VIP shuttle-buses waiting to transport our daughters’ next gang-rapists to their ‘inappropriate’ four-star accommodation? Tell me, I’d love to know.
Short of Keir Starmer writing the foreword to Jeremy Corbyn’s upcoming double bestsellers, Why I Fucking Hate The Jews and Hitler Didn’t Go Far Enough, the Labour Party are now undeniably a shoo-in at this year’s general election. That the Tories will be annihilated is not only to be hoped for, but is now effectively a done deal. And yet, what exactly is there to celebrate for the right-wing vote in Britain? If the conservative voters refuse to turn out for Reform UK in a seat as compromised as Wellingborough, then, short of a Farage-led coup of the Conservative Party, it looks like it’s back to the drawing board.
Well might the electorate grumble, but for those in Wellingborough (and likely, the majority across the nation come election time), they will only have themselves to blame.
Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.
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I saw the phrase/notice below years ago and I have never doubted its sarcasm or its accuracy.
Message from the Chairman
“Last week’s meeting of the Apathy Society has been cancelled”
No matter what state the country is in… No matter how people complain about the Government.. The buck stops with the voters. You quoted Churchill. When, in 1940, the prospects for the United Kingdom could not have been worse, but he said he had “Total faith in the people”. (I have read MANY works of and by the Great Man, but I don’t come within a million miles of his skill at recall.) I think the population mix he witnessed have GONE FOREVER. Sadly too, there’s not the slightest sign of a Leader of the Great Man’s ilk.
Surely the winners are the 62% (plus any deliberately spoiled papers) of those who didn’t vote.
The question is how that refusal to vote, OK some of the 62% are apathetic and have never had any interest in voting, can you now really blame them?, can be mobilised. Sadly it won’t, because ‘none of the above’ will never be added to the voting paper because we have never really lived in a democracy and if the turn out was a single person, whoever this individual voted for the candidates Party would still accept the victory and claim it as proof of their popularity and legitimacy.
Unless the non vote can be harnessed then the voter-sheep will continue to prop up the old Parties and any newcomer Parties won’t stand a chance unless led by someone charismatic and yet with some unsullied Governmental experience to show that they know how the system works.
A most perceptive argument. Post-WW2, this nation has bred more than one generation of apathetic comfortable couch potatoes, who find more interest in distractive bread-and-circus media entertainment – be it endless spectator sports, television extravaganzas, drinking, gambling, raving or social media glamour-posting or fashion influencing – than in alert democratic citizen activity.
The Establishment encourages or at least actively tolerates this smoke-and-mirrors mentality in order to distract from its nefarious autocratic activities (the “good day to bury bad news” syndrome). It all confirms the frequent observation that our political representative system is less of a true democracy and more of an elective oligarchy.
The attitude of Sunak’s docile tame audience in the recent GB News event [https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sunak-the-smooth-talking-second-hand-car-salesman/] tells us much of what we need to know about large sections of the electorate.