Democracy: flawed but not nasty

A democracy, according to Oxford Dictionaries is 'a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives', and adds 'control of an organization or group by the majority of its members'.  Well in 2010 the Tories did very well and achieved  a great increase in their percentage vote which went to 36.1%. With 23.0% voting for the Liberal Democrats this means that 59.1% of voters managed to give their support to this Government. Have a look here and you will see that in all the general elections since 1945 this Government is unique in receiving the support of more than 50% of the voters.

So we can say that we are living in a democracy but many would argue that all other elections were part of a great British tradition of democracy. They will be looking at the figures for the number of MPs in each party but what this means is that there are many constituencies in which blue is bound to win and many others in which red will do the same. All the losers (usually the majority) won't think much of this democracy. 

Democracy should mean that individual opinions matter. It should mean that everyone has the ability to make change happen but in reality individuals don't have a strong voice and there is a huge group of non-voters. It's nothing to do with their ability to vote. If they could vote at weekends or online or by any other method they would still not be bothered and part of the blame has to go with the politicians and part with the system of voting. There will be many other reasons but if no election is ever won by one vote then you can hardly expect any one individual to think that their vote counts. If all you hear is politicians calling each other then you can hardly expect voters to think their candidates are worthy of their vote. I often see the words 'this nasty' before the word 'Government'. This is not an attack on a particular policy, it is an attack on politicians. It is an attack on what we have left of a democracy. It is a pity that some Labour supporters cannot see this.

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