The people of Britain have voted ‘No’ to the Alternative Vote, and I accept the result. This is a democracy, after all! The issue must now be laid to rest, and the discussion about electoral reform closed for the foreseeable future. To do anything else would be childish. But just before I shut up on this topic, please humour me for one last reflection.
As those around me will know, I poured my heart and soul into the Yes campaign for this referendum, believing the Alternative Vote, while not perfect, to be a fairer, more representative and ultimately more just way of electing MPs than the system we have now decided to stick with. I campaigned in the streets, delivered leaflets, wore badges, displayed posters, drew cartoons, wrote blog posts, and brought it up in every conversation with all my friends for a month. I even stood outside the polling station for four hours on polling day. I am proud to say I did everything I could. And yet of course that means I feel gutted that even my best wasn’t good enough. I feel hurt, bruised, rejected, frustrated and angry. I’m sure I’m not the only Yes campaigner who feels that way.
But those are just feelings. They will fade, life will go on, and perspective will come. It always does. In fact, I already feel a bit better.
To me, one of the most frustrating things is that we know the result, but not the reasons. Obviously some people will have carefully considered the two voting systems and voted ‘No’ out of a genuine conclusion that FPTP is a fairer and better system than AV. And I respect the views of those people, even though I disagree. But how many people voted ‘No’ out of anger at Nick Clegg and a short-sighted desire to punish his party or the coalition? How many voted ‘No’ out of fear of change, or because of deliberate misinformation about costs or complexity? How many just did what the media told them to do?
I realise that drawing an analogy with Jesus’ trial is fraught with danger because we’re sometimes told we mustn’t mix politics and religion. But as I feel unjustly humiliated by this result, and as Nick Clegg (despite his faults) must feel the biggest victim of all, I am reminded that Jesus experienced much worse. He knew full well that the crowd shouting “Crucify” were not in possession of all the facts about who he was. He knew that they were being manipulated by religious leaders with an agenda, not to mention leading figures with a political agenda. (So much for not mixing politics and religion!) And yet he let them do what they wanted to do.
He knew that the majority are not always right, but respected them nonetheless.
I can’t say with certainty whether the AV referendum (or indeed our nation’s treatment of Nick Clegg) deserves to be portrayed this way; only God knows that. And in no way can I claim to be free of party political bias myself, or be sure that I’m right. Who knows what the years ahead hold for our democracy? But this I do know for sure, whatever ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ mean in this context, whether electoral change ever comes or not: love and justice will always win in the end.
We’ve come a long way from the time when Jesus lived and the boundaries between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in many contexts seem to have become very blurred since then. Our laws are based on those set out in the Bible but many have been eroded and laws changed to fit today’s culture where the majority no longer believe in an absolute right and wrong but a right to choose and certain Western ideals. (This is a slight tangent – I don’t mean to say that the Bible has anything to say about whether we should adopt an AV or FPTP system!) As you rightly say, God is love, He is just and He is sovereign. So how can we not mix religion with politics when government rule the people, pass laws, provide for the needy and so on. The goverenment has a huge influence on the people for good or otherwise and to desire that God’s will is done is only right.