This is a further adaptation of my first blog which I originally wrote as a DM to a group of friends to tell them something of my background. I saw that, with a bit of editing, it was exactly what I required for an introductory blogpost, but it needed further editing to bring it up to date. I had some difficulty creating a new blog from old material but I managed.

I became eligible to vote when I turned 21 and two days later the voting age was lowered to 18, which meant that my eldest sister got the right to vote at the same time. I didn’t vote in the election that year, I was away in Cornwall & hadn’t arranged for a postal vote, & emigrated to Australia shortly afterwards.

Voting is compulsory in Australia & I always voted Labor, except once when I voted for an independent! It was a protest vote, like many others I wanted a Labor Government with a reduced majority that would make them take voters more seriously. It backfired! We ended up with a lot of independent MPs & a Liberal government! The Liberals thought they’d won the election when in fact Labor had lost it, and we reversed it at the next election. But it showed me the futility of protest votes and convinced me that I needed to be a member of the Australian Labor Party if I wanted to influence policy.

The 2024 UK General Election was quite similar, the difference being that Starmer’s Tories didn’t win the election, Sunak’s Tories lost it! And he’ld do the same again!

When I joined the ALP I was studying as a mature student at the University of Newcastle NSW, finally graduating at the age of 40. I battled homelessness & alcoholism to achieve that goal but was sober & settled when I joined. A fellow member of my ALP branch asked me what I was I was studying at university & when I told her it was Political Philosophy she asked how I reconciled that with party politics. My answer is I don’t, as a philosopher I’m used to asking awkward questions, but I’m not gonna wait for an answer before deciding how to vote!

I was active in one NSW elections, standing outside a polling station polling station all day handing out “How To Vote” leaflets. This is quite legitimate in a system with Proportional Representation, we want voters to know where we wish them to direct their second preferences. All parties were doing the same and the atmosphere was quite convivial – we had a job to do and political argument wasn’t part of it.

I remained behind to enviligate the counting of the votes. It was my job to challenge a vote that I thought was informal or had been placed on the wrong pile. I wasn’t allowed to touch the ballots.

This made me late in getting back to the constituency office to hear the exit polls – we lost by such a narrow margin that we appealed. It was one of the two most marginal seats in New South Wales and if we’ld won both seats we would have had a Labor government,but the other constituency had a similar problem – not quite enough votes to win!

Our candidate was Secretary of our branch (I was Treasurer) and stood down as a candidate in Federal elections in favour of a someone who had stood against him as an independent in state elections and, according to party rules, hadn’t been a member long enough to stand as a candidate. We could have won if he hadn’t split the vote and winning those two seats would’ve given us a Labor government in NSW. I briefly considered standing myself, I was better qualified according to party rules although they appeared to have gone by the board, but my youthful idealism was something of the past. I accepted that I was more of a philopher than a politician and that my influence on policy would be negligible, at branch level we were more concerned with local issues like potholes!

There was one issue where I did put the cat among the pigeons, that was concerning privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank. Having initiated the debate I had the privilege of speaking first and our MP, who was present on this occasion, spoke last. There was a lot of vigorous debate in between but everyone missed my original point – my objection was not to the policy itself but to say it had been decided without consultation without members and our MPs job was merely to convey the decision to us, not to convey our opinions upwards!

I came back to UK pretty disillusioned & didn’t even bothervoting until 2010 as I couldn’t see much difference between the main parties. Then I joined Twitter & was awakened from my apathy! Chelley Ryan had started a petition for a socialist candidate to stand for leadership of the Labour Party and as soon as Jeremy threw his hat in the ring we pulled out all stops to get him elected! I was able to vote for him as a member of Unite Community & joined the Labour Party on the day he was elected. I also voted for Tom Watson and like many others, have come to regret it.

Jeremy was up against the Labour Party establishment from the start, they predicted that he wouldn’t win an election and made sure he wouldn’t! He nevertheless managed to get more votes for Labour in both the 2015 and 2019 elections than Starmer did in 2024!

Corbyn has undoubtedly made mistakes, his biggest was entrusting Starmer with the Brexit business – those who didn’t want a second referendum had one anyway, they just called it a general election and elected the man most responsible as our Prime Monster! I didn’t want one election, I believe it was badly mishandled and should have required more than a simple majority to pass. I didn’t have a say in the original referendum on whether to join the Common Market (as it was then called) and I had so my many friend offering different opinions that I couldn’t absorb it all!

I think Jeremy did try to get a deal that we could accept, even if we weren’t entirely happy, but he made the mistake of leaving it Starmer’s hands. I don’t blame Jeremy for the confusion over Brexit, I blame Starmer. He could have done more to clarify the issue, but what’s the point of having a dog if you bark yourself? It was Starmer’s job, Jeremy’s mistake was to trust him to do it!

I think this illustrates the difference in leadership style. Where Starmer says “I’m putting you in charge of carrying out my instructions, go and do them!” Jeremy “Says, this is what I would like done, please find a way of doing it!”

In my first year at university a lecturer split us into groups to do a classic lifeboat issue – who would I you throw out? I said to my group “I don’t think any of us has the right to make that decision.” They agreed and that was the answer I gave on behalf of the group. It turned out that the lecturer was actually conducting an experiment to see who would emerge as leader of the group and it turned out to be me, although he hadn’t appointed me as leader or invited others to choose a leader. I don’t think of myself as a leader, the best leaders rarely do, but I think I’m carrying that leadership style into social media. Plenty of people are heeding what I have to say without taking my word for gospel, if I can awaken people to what’s happening in the world and encourage them to learn more then my work will not have been in vain 👋