A very British coup

It's not even been a week since the results of the EU Referendum were announced, but in just a few short days the UK has descended into chaos. Pie Minister David Cameron announced his resignation shortly after the results were announced, then the internal divisions in the Labour Party sank to the lowest point in a very long time and it was announced that a motion of a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn was to be raised at the PLP meeting, then Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn was sacked for stating he didn't think Corbyn was up to being leader, following this the shadow cabinet lost a further 19 members, and the most recent news: 172 Labour MPs have voted in favour of the motion of no confidence in Corbyn. To be blunt, the political world is a complete shambles at the moment. I have already briefly spoken about the internal divisions in the Labour Party, but I wanted to discuss the electorate's relationship with Labour and the problems that arise from a two-party state like the UK.

The argument that we've been hearing for the past year since Jeremy Corbyn came onto the scene are along the lines of "elections are won on the centre ground" so "Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable" - but is that so? If elections are won on the centre ground, can anyone explain why the Lib Dems are yet to have won a single election? Or why Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband didn't manage to become Prime Minister? There are obviously other factors affecting election results, I'm not here to dispute that, but centrist politics are extremely damaging and a key component in creating political apathy and disillusionment.

When the two main parties are offering similar policies, we become shallow and fickle in choosing who we want to represent our country, we buy into the image, the appearance, the charisma of the candidate. This isn't true of all voters of course - for example, I can't imagine a scenario where I would vote Tory because it is my personal view that it is wrong to victimise poorer people, but we all have our priorities, maybe that's just crazy commie Bess speaking. It's the swing voters who can make or break the election result, and when it's hard to distinct between the two main parties because their policies are so similar, you're more likely to be captivated by the charisma. In addition, the apathetic belief that "all politicians are the same" is a direct result of centrism taking over in politics, why would you believe that politicians are offering you something new when realistically they're not because they share a lot of the same policies?

Centrism results in a cynical electorate because it is clear that the politicians are saying what they think the electorate wants to hear, they are making promises to the people but then when they get into power they try and pull away from centrist policies and implement the ones they genuinely believe in. Translation: they lie to get voted in and then don't come through on their promises, this results in people losing faith in politicians and becoming disillusioned. If you're disillusioned and apathetic, why would you vote? Why would you vote when "they're all the same"? This is why turnout is quite low, why would you vote when you feel like your vote doesn't matter? If the EU Referendum showed us anything, it's that we're in dire need of electoral reform - the turnout was about 20% higher than in the last General Election, people vote when they believe their vote matters and will make a difference.

In addition to this, the UK is essentially a two-party state. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it's true, that's why parties like the Greens and UKIP only have one seat each whilst Labour and the Conservatives hold most of the others (unless you're in Scotland, in which case SNP are a pretty viable option). This means when we vote, you essentially have to make the choice between Labour and Tory. It is a lesser of two evils situation generally. My MP, for example, voted to introduce tuition fees and to bomb Syria just to give a couple of examples. I don't really feel adequately represented by him, but I would rather a Labour MP than a Tory MP which was why he got my vote. I would put money on the fact that most of the electorate vote in a similar way, my constituency represents that we don't support the Tories but it can't really be taken much further than that in this scenario. It it for this reason that the PLP are not truly representative of the electorate, 172 MPs in the PLP supported a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn and the New Labour sect of the party are using this as evidence that Corbyn has lost the support of the electorate. This is ignoring the fact that Corbyn was never insanely popular with the the PLP to begin with - he needed 35 nominations from the PLP to get onto the ballot paper for the leadership election and he only just got in with 36, but when you compare that to the actual leadership election where he won with nearly 60% which is a landslide, it's obvious that he's more popular with the electorate. For this reason, we cannot honestly state that the MPs are representative of the electorate and we cannot let this coup damage our support of Corbyn. Those who resigned are not worthy of the position they had, I mean every single one who resigned voted in support of or abstained from voting on the 2015 Welfare Bill which resulted in the poor and disabled paying for £12 billion more in cuts - are these the people who represent us?

The media and the right-wingers will have us believe that Corbyn is unelectable, but so many of us voted him in against all the odds, against all the Blairites and the Tories. We have to call into question why the media and the right-wingers are quite so opposed to Corbyn, the attack on him is very extreme in comparison to other party leaders. As Another Angry Voice pointed out, this is exactly the sort of response you would expect when a candidate is as anti-establishment as Corbyn is. I will continue to stick by Corbyn, and I hope you do so too. Do not succumb to the propaganda, remember we are the electorate and we have the power.

A vote of confidence for Corbyn

7am. The full results of the EU referendum were announced and, frankly speaking, the country went into panic. Angry Facebook posts right, left, and centre, abuse being hurled from both the Brexiteers and the Bremainers, all of this with the odd meme in between.

I am not going to continue to sit here and complain about the results, I've done enough of that. We need to act fast and organise, we need to make use of our frustration and mobilise, it has been an eventful day and that just goes to show how quickly we must act before the situation worsens.

I'll keep this brief. The Lexiteers and the Bremainers alike must unite under a shared goal of ousting the Tories. As we have learned from the past few elections, elections are not won on the centre ground (just ask the Lib Dems) and Jeremy Corbyn is realistically the only strongly left-wing candidate, he is the only one offering a new kind of politics. We need to remember in the leadership elections, he managed to win back those who had defected to UKIP, he managed to inspire the apathetic and disillusioned which is a great, great feat, let's not forget he won with a landslide! Ever since Corbyn became leader, the internal divisions in the Labour Party have become increasingly clear, to the point where a certain former Labour Party leader essentially endorsed the Tories over Corbyn. As Corbyn was backing Remain, the vote to leave is a point against him, and it's one that the Blairites in the party are cynically capitalising on to attack Jeremy. The Leave campaign was based upon mendacity, it capitalised on people's fears about immigration as well as people's fears about the NHS facing further cuts just to name a couple, it became a campaign based upon hatred and deep seated hostility. Jeremy's campaign during the campaign was spot on, defending free movement and holding the Tories accountable for the damage they have done and used the EU as a scapegoat for. To oust him now would be disastrous for the future of the Labour Party, we need to unite under our shared goal of defeating the Tories. Instead of widening the divisions in the Labour Party, we need to remember who the real enemy is.

This is where you come in. There has been a proposal for a vote of no confidence for Corbyn to be brought up in PLP, if you do not want a Tory government, if you do not want a continuation of fear, lies, and institutionalised oppression, we cannot let this go ahead. What we can do is e-mail our local Labour MPs as fast as we can urging them not to comply. If you want to find the contact details for your local MP, you can go to this website - you must act fast, we must mobilise ourselves. Below is the e-mail I sent to my local MP, feel free to use it as a template.

"Dear Gareth,
Like 48% of the voters in the referendum, I'm incredibly unhappy that Leave won. However, I am even more unhappy that it is being used cynically to attack Jeremy Corbyn. The Leave campaign was based upon mendacity, it capitalised on people's fears about immigration as well as people's fears about the NHS facing further cuts just to name a couple, it became a campaign based upon hatred and deep seated hostility. Jeremy's campaign during the campaign was spot on, defending free movement and holding the Tories accountable for the damage they have done and used the EU as a scapegoat for. I'm writing to you to help stop this very damaging vote of no confidence in Jeremy, and I would like your assurance that you'll vote against the motion in the PLP. Jeremy Corbyn won a landslide in the Leadership election, so many people joined the Labour Party solely to vote for him, he inspired the apathetic and disillusioned which is a great, great feat and it would be foolish to forget that. To oust him now would be disastrous for the future of the Labour Party, we need to unite under our shared goal of defeating the Tories. Instead of widening the divisions in our own Party, we need to remember who the real enemy is.
Kind regards,
Bess Oates"

Solidarity to you all, let's organise ourselves gang - change can happen. As the Style Council once said, "you don't have to take this crap, you don't have to sit back and relax, you can actually try changing it, I know we've always been taught to rely upon those in authority but you never know until you try how things just might be if we came together so strongly"...

The problem with Defeatism

I've seen too many people on my Facebook feed posting about how it's a waste of time to vote because the outcome of the EU referendum has been predetermined by a higher power, it's apathetic, it's defeatist, and it's one of the biggest problems regarding political discourse.

Defeatism in politics is very, very dangerous and all it does is help to maintain the conservative status quo. If you have the mentality that "one vote never made a difference" and that the higher powers are going to ignore the real outcome of the referendum because they've predetermined whether or not we're leaving, the message you're presenting is "things are a bit crap as they are, but I'm not going to do anything to try to make it better because it's not worth my time", you are accepting and essentially justifying injustice and inequality because you don't think it's worth your time because you don't think things can or will change - can you imagine how many inequalities would be able to continue if every protest group and every campaigner shared that mentality? The world we live in would be a very different, even darker place - it may not be quite as relevant in the case of the EU, but defeatism itself is a problem that needs to be defeated (pun intended).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am very empathic towards those who are apathetic when it comes to politics and it's very easy to get into this defeatist mentality, but what you need to do is take the anger and resentment you hold against the status quo and use that to fight for a better tomorrow (ew cringe but I'm going somewhere with this). Tony Benn believed that there are two prerequisites for social change: "the burning flame of anger at injustice, and the burning flame of hope at a better world". I believe that defeatism encompasses that anger and upset at the way things are currently, but you're going to have a hard time bringing about social change if the only thing you are doing is sharing posts on Facebook.

Long story short, you think the outcome of the referendum has been predetermined? Fine, you can hold that belief, but you should still vote in the chance that it's not. Sitting on a fence is not progressive, so it saddens me to see people who claim to be radical and anti-establishment sitting back and doing nothing and essentially aiding conservative agenda. Also, FYI, you can be anti-establishment and a voter, the two things are not mutually exclusive.

If you haven't registered to vote in the referendum, this is probably just me screaming into the void but defeatism is a poison and I'd like to see a lot less of it from the left. If you did register, I hope you all go out and vote (cough cough remain).

The importance of voting

Political participation is one of our most valuable human rights, but it is one that 7.5 million people in the UK are not utilising as they're not registered to vote in the upcoming EU referendum. We are socialised with this belief that one vote never made a difference, but if all of the people who believed that (like the 34% of registered voters in 2015 who didn't vote and that's not even including the people who didn't register), it could and would swing the vote.

I completely understand why political apathy is at an all time high, especially amongst the youth. The political discourse that's often presented to us is overcomplicated and saturated with buzzwords, it confuses people and I wholeheartedly believe this is deliberate, it is done in the hope that the generally more open-minded, empathic youth don't get invested in politics and so we develop a cognitive dissonance so we feel disconnected from the issues that are being discussed. This tactic is used specifically to maintain the conservative status quo - we all joke about it being old, white men in government but the situation is as it stands because they are trying to keep the youth from getting interested. Youths tend to care about people, and this directly conflicts with conservative ideology. Long story short, it's dangerous for Tories to standardise political education in schools because if the youths became engaged in politics and all voted, the right would crumble.

For true, representative democracy (I'm not arguing that First Past the Post is representative, but I digress) 100% political participation is ideal. If you don't feel like any of the options available to you represent your political beliefs, you can spoil your ballot which is in itself a political statement but do not under any means just abstain from voting. As Owen Jones often says "we are standing on the shoulders of giants" - from the Chartists, to the Suffragettes, people have been fighting for our vote, fighting for democracy, for centuries. If you don't vote, you are actively dismissing and discrediting everything these people fought for. We cannot allow ourselves to be marginalised, our voice matters and political participation is a right we should protect at all costs.

The deadline for registering to vote in the EU Referendum is the 7th June - you can register here, it only takes about 2 minutes at most and the outcome of this referendum will affect youths most.