TOM PHILLIPS: So what happened was, I mentioned I might not bother voting, and you, Alan, told me that I was history's greatest monster. Is that a fair summary of how this conversation started?
ALAN WHITE: Seems pretty accurate. You are the worst person.
TOM: So, first up, let's get one thing clear: I'm not Russell Branding here. I don’t think young people – or, you know, people of any age – should actively avoid voting, as some sort of vague protest about a corrupt system.
No, I just wish people would stop being sanctimonious at me when I say I might not bother voting.
ALAN: Sorry.
TOM: I mean Alan, the title of your email suggesting this conversation was literally “your a dick”, so I’m sensing some hostility there.
ALAN: I’m sorry.
TOM: Right now, I'm not registered to vote. I might do it over the next few days. Or I might not. It honestly doesn't matter. I live in a massively safe Labour seat – their majority in 2010 was over 10,000, with more than double the votes of their nearest rival. There simply isn't a chance in hell that anybody else is going to win this seat. And in our electoral system, that's the thing that matters.
Not bothering to vote isn't a great betrayal of our national values, it's not letting the extremists win, it's just an informed, reasonable decision about what to do with my time. Which as you know is super important and filled with vital tasks, such as binge-watching Daredevil.
ALAN: I get why people, especially young people, don't vote. What's the point? Our electoral system means that most seats won't change hands even if there's a landslide. Our main parties offer little that's attractive to someone aged 18-24 – hell, I'm considerably older than that and I find the mud-slinging, the stunts, the weasel words, and above all their faces largely insufferable.
So why would I tell you to vote? Because if young people voted at, say, the rate pensioners do, while it wouldn't change the result, it would have an impact on the political class. For a start, the Lib Dems would possibly be shunted into fifth behind the Greens. Quite apart from any hilarious side effects, it would encourage our politicians to engage with those voters in a way they haven't before. Who knows, maybe even offer policies that would attract them?
But beyond that, there could be a cultural shift. Young people are hideously misrepresented by the media and for years politicians have only fed into those stereotypes. Right now it's in their interests to talk about "feral youths" and the like. But they also know which side their bread is buttered. You simply can't demonise the people on whose votes you might be counting.
SIRAJ DATOO: As an actual young person, can I butt in?
ALAN: Absolutely.
TOM: Hi Siraj!
SIRAJ: The thing is, I get it. Politics can be boring. And it doesn’t help that politicians are often very patronising when they try to explain why people should vote. Take this from a local council: “If you can't vote, you cannot have your say on issues that matter to you.”
And sometimes it feels like you’re being threatened. Take this from the same council: “If you don't return your electoral registration form you could face a fine.” Neither are particularly inspiring.
Perhaps it's just that I’m young and naive (yes, that was a jab at both of you). But this is the first election I can actually vote in, and I’m a little excited about that.
It helps that I’m in a marginal constituency where my vote could have an impact on the outcome. And we know this election is close, with the main parties really struggling to get a majority. So I figured I should probably register.
TOM: Look, if you live in a seat that's even a little bit marginal, and if you have even a slight preference for one party over another, then you should absolutely register the fuck out of your vote. If you vote has a chance of mattering, use it.
I just think saying things like "You have a voice!" or "Every vote matters!" is patronising and counterproductive when for millions of people in hundreds of constituencies across the country it's simply not true.
SIRAJ: Agreed. But I’m still interested in whether people actually listen to the Greens' message not to vote tactically and vote for them anyway.
ALAN: If you ask me, if politicians screw up badly enough, they'll get a kicking however safe their seat might appear to be. Michael Portillo had a majority of about 15,000 in 1992 – five years later, Labour won the seat. Isn't that incredible? Not that thousands of people once pinned their political hopes on Britain's most famous train enthusiast – well, that too come to think of it – but the fact it happened, and no one saw it coming. And who can forget Neil Hamilton getting booted out of one of the safest Tory seats you could hope to see by an ex-BBC reporter?
TOM: As someone who is also well old and stayed up for Portillo back in '97, you don't need to remind me of that. Amazing scenes. But, like, the reason we remember it so well is because it doesn't happen very much! There are loads of terrible, terrible MPs on all sides who will never lose their seat; just as there are plenty of good constituency MPs who are doomed to get blown away by the slightest shift in the political breeze.
I just think that if we want to get more young people voting, finger-wagging about how they'll keep on being ignored unless they vote (regardless of how effective their vote would actually be) probably isn't the best strategy. Surely our would-be leaders should, you know, take the lead on this? Resist the temptation to turn elections into a game of Kick The Feckless Youth and, I dunno, maybe talk seriously and honestly about housing policy or something?
SIRAJ: But as I said, I reckon voting is still impactful even in areas that aren’t marginals, if only to make people listen. The key thing is the election campaigns and manifestos are heavily influenced by strategists. And speaking cynically, strategists don’t really see people, they see voters. So if you’re not registered to vote, you don’t even register on the spectrum.
ALAN: Essentially, Tom’s objection appears to be less with voting – or not – and rather more with political zealots trying to force you into voting and being weird and annoying.
TOM: Most of my objections in life are to political zealots being weird and annoying.
ALAN: I have a lot of time for that point of view. I suppose the problem is that they have to do something, and the "Hey youths, check out this hot voting trend" shtick is all they know. But at the same time, an earnest chat about housing policy doesn't really push my buttons.
Maybe I'm a symptom of a larger problem. People take longer to grow up than they used to. That's not their fault. It's not their fault that they can't buy a house, or that there are hardly any good graduate jobs around, it's not their fault that it therefore takes longer to make a family or even just leave home. But if you don't have a mortgage or kids or whatever, then what policies are you really going to care about? Tuition fees maybe. And we know how that went.
TOM: I still think that trying to make people feel bad about not voting, rather than giving them a positive reason to vote, is getting this whole thing arse-backwards. And I fully agree that young people are systematically ignored and often demonised by our political class and our media. But that's a waaaaaay deeper structural issue than simply a lack of young people voting. And frankly it's a bit of a dick move to say that young people are the ones who have to take the first step in fixing it.
SIRAJ: So here’s a question: what else could we do that might actually give people my age more of a reason to go to the polls?
ALAN: Eeeeeeehhhhhhh.
TOM: Valid point.
ALAN: Make it compulsory? That works for Australians.
SIRAJ: The other day, a colleague of ours from BuzzFeed Australia said that people tend to read about politics more there, mainly because they have to vote.
TOM: In Bolivia they stop you accessing your bank account for three months if you don’t vote. That’s pretty hardcore.
ALAN: They should just got the whole hog and make people walk around town with an “I’m not democratically engaged and I stink” billboard.
Anyway. In Sweden they have this thing called a Democracy Passport. It basically explains all the powers that citizens have at each different legislative level. I sometimes feel like that would be a good thing for British people because frankly, most of us have no idea who to shout at when, say, we tread in a dog turd our neighbour’s failed to pick up. Do we contact the parish council, or do a Brian Harvey and take our protest straight to Number 10?
I’ve just read this Time article about the Democracy Passport and was struck by this quote: “The places that improve participation tend to be places where regular people connect with politics and make collective decisions all the time, not just in election season.”
TOM: Yeah, it definitely feels like part of the problem is that we only remember to worry about a lack of participation once every five years. And we’ve no real way of knowing whether a lack of participation represents a protest against the system, apathy, contentment, or just the lure of watching Daredevil instead.
ALAN: This is it, really. We talk about fixing political disengagement by doing things like moving the day of the election, or online voting, or compulsory voting, or whatever. And quite often the people holding those conversations don’t realise they’re part of the problem – which is that they are of the political class and are to some degree or another detached from the majority of the electorate.
One thing that struck me in recent times was Queen’s Park’s attempts to bring in a parish council to deal with everything from, well, dog poo, actually, to health issues on the main estate there and even stopping kids getting into gangs. People there realised that actually politics could impact their quality of life, even if only a tiny bit, and that made them politically engaged where once they hadn’t been.
TOM: Yup. I mean, in many ways, if you want to get involved in everyday politics, currently your options are… what? Join a local political party? I mean that’s cool if you’re into it, and some local parties can do good work, but it’s not so great if you’re non-aligned, and too often the experience can be dispiriting: “we only want you when we’ve got leaflets to deliver” is the message that comes across too often. It feels very hard to make a difference.
ALAN: You could put on a mask, head out into the night and punch people in the face. It’s only really necessary if a crime syndicate is planning to bulldoze your neighbourhood so they can gentrify it, but anyway, just putting that option on the table.
TOM: I think that would really engage young people with politics.
SIRAJ: Totally down with that idea.
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