"When you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to.” It’s a good soundbite – Keir Starmer is always at his most sure-footed when he is shafting his predecessor. But of course it isn’t true, at least of modern democracies as we now know them: and the upcoming US election is surely a case in point. Which is more detrimental to this case, I wonder – the fact that Trump is already poised, were something to go wrong, to accuse democracy of malfunctioning, or the fact that so many Americans, in that eventuality, might be inclined to believe him?
Progressives have a particular set of hurdles when it comes to democratic elections today, most of which boil down to convincing others they can “get things done” – whether this is Brexit or frankly anything else. One neglected factor is the electoral metaphor of backing a winner. Generations of impotent populaces have treated their vote as their one throw of the dice every five years. Fear of backing a loser is a real force to be reckoned with.
For progressives, circumventing this involves a complicated two-step. One STEP: First we have to articulate people's discontent at the diabolical state of things. Two STEP: then instil hope, with little tangible evidence, that this can nevertheless be transformed. All too easily the right breezing in, calling us ‘doom and gloomsters’, head us off at the pass before STEP 2. It involves considerable tact.
