If you don't vote you can't complain!

I was inspired to write this post after turning on my TV this morning to be greeted by the image of Ian McMillan (who I had no idea who he was until today) on BBC Breakfast talking about the Newark by-election.  Quite apart from the fact that he also seemed to believe (erroneously) that a single voter could make a difference (even in a closely contested by-election, how often does it come down to a single vote?), he also made the following declaration:

"If you don't vote, don't complain.  If you don't vote it's nowt [sic] to do with you."

This seems to be a ubiquitous sentiment amongst people of various political leanings.  It is also something with which I happen to completely disagree.

Firstly, the fact that a person has (correctly) concluded that their vote has a negligible chance of making any difference whatsoever and therefore (rationally) decided that there are better uses of their time* than reading through flyers, manifestos, propaganda and other policy documents does not in any way make their opinions and preferences carry any less weight than someone who has made the alternative choice to vote.  Every single person is equally entitled to their opinion and equally entitled to complain, campaign, support or protest in whatever (peaceful) way they see fit, this extends to those who either could not or chose not to vote.

Secondly, refraining from voting can itself be a form of protest.  Admittedly, the problem with protesting in this way is it isn't possible from voting turnout figures to distinguish those who didn't vote out of protest from those who were apathetic, lazy or indeed simply had better things to do*.

One could argue that those who don't vote out of principal or in protest actually have more of a right to complain that those of us who do.  If you happen to have voted in favour of the candidate/party/policy which wins an election/referendum you have implicitly given your consent to be governed/represented/constrained by said candidate/party/policy and legitimised the use of certain powers and constraints over you and those you care about.  Even if you vote against the eventual winner, by participating in the election/referendum process you accept that process as legitimate and therefore implicitly accept the outcome of that process.

Say that you voted for the Libertarian Party at the last General Election.  Since the Libertarian Party have no MPs you would feel that your views have little to no representation in Parliament.  Chances are high that your representative in the House of Commons is either a Conservative or Labour party member (possibly a Liberal Democrat).  Whichever of the major parties they represent, you didn't vote for them.  You think that this therefore gives you the right to complain about them, their party and everything they do and stand for.  However, you still participated in the process which saw them elected.  You just don't like the outcome in this particular instance, in other words you don't like the choices that most other people have made.  But, you agreed to participate in the process which resulted in that outcome!

I say free speech to all.  This means it doesn't matter whether you vote or not you still have every right to express your opinions in whatever peaceful ways you see fit.  Let the non-voters complain if they've got something they think is worth complaining about!


* Some examples of better uses of ones time than voting include: spending time with ones family / friends / loved ones, working to provide for oneself and ones family, spending time at a hobby, doing some DIY/redecorating to improve ones home, enjoying a good meal, enjoying a music concert, etc.

The Political Spectrum?

There's something about a lot of political discourse in the blogosphere that particularly irritates me: talk of 'the political spectrum', in particular use of the terms 'the left' and 'the right' by people of all sorts of political affiliation as both complimentary and pejorative terms.

The terms 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' have their origins in the French Revolution, where in the French Parliament, those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of the revolution, including the creation of a republic and secularisation; those who sat on the right supported preservation of the monarchy, aristocracy and the established church.

More recently the term left-wing has been used to describe ideologies as wide ranging as anarchism, social liberalism, social democracy, socialism and communism.  Similarly, right-wing has been applied to conservatives, reactionaries, aristocrats, monarchists and theocrats as well as those who support both free-market capitalism and some forms of nationalism.

The problem with this is that the terms are sufficiently vague so as to include such wide-ranging viewpoints that they are effectively rendered meaningless.  By the generally accepted definitions given above, anarchists for example, are both left and right-wing.

Rather than thinking in terms of a left-right political spectrum, it is probably more accurate to think in terms of a plain of political ideas, an idea perhaps best captured by the Nolan Chart.

There's an example of a Nolan Chart below.  This one has been rotated 45 degrees counter-clockwise so that the 'liberal' region is on the left and the 'conservative' region on the right.  If you like to think in terms of left and right-wing politics these correspond (very roughly) to the left and right sides of the diagram.


The x-axis (which runs along the lower right of the graph) represents economic freedom, whilst the y-axis (lower left) represents personal freedom.

An explanation of where some typical ideologies lie on the Nolan Chart:

• Communism can be considered to span almost the entire length of the lower left side of the chart, spanning both the statist (authoritarian) and liberal regions.
• Socialism lies next to communism, slightly further up and to the right on the chart.
• Liberalism, as should be apparent, covers the liberal area of the chart.
• Social Democracy sits in the middle of the liberal part of the graph.
• Totalitarianism and Fascism lie at the extreme point of the statist (authoritarian) region, at the very bottom of the chart.
• Conservatism and Christian Democracy lie in the conservative area.
• Libertarianism, obviously, covers the libertarian region.
• Anarchism sits at the extreme tip of the libertarian region, right at the top of the graph, with maximum economic and personal freedom.
• The centrist region contains many mainstream politicians and parties, combining more moderate ideas from many different ideologies.

In case you were wondering, the little star on the chart is where I personally sit on this measure of political ideology (as a self-described 'liberal with libertarian tendencies' I was hardly surprised by this result).  If you want to find out where you lie, try out this quiz; it seems to me to be quite accurate, despite only containing 10 questions, some of which are not ideally worded.