BY JOE NUTT

Someone who teaches writing to undergraduates recently made this astute observation online: “At university, your main reader is always a peer. That means your readership numbers in the tens, perhaps hundreds, not thousands.” One of the least understood concepts about writing in any context, is this stark reality. Who, really, are you writing this for? Do you even know?

This numerical but entirely human puzzle, strikes me as particularly significant when you look at the thousands of words being ground out in the build-up to the UK’s general election on July 4th. Mainstream media is bubbling and frothing with journalists, most notably ex-journalists, frantically advising people how to vote in order to deliver the government they personally would like to see. These people invest considerable time and energy in exploring hugely doubtful polls and shamelessly partisan commentary, in the fantastical hope that by doing so they will have a credible picture of what millions of individuals in Great Britain will do with a stubby little pencil, early in July.  

It’s not their confidence as prose writers that astounds me; it’s their Ozone layer arrogance. They really didn’t learn anything at all from the Brexit referendum, did they? How could one possibly pen advice like that unless you believed hundreds of thousands of voters had so much faith in your opinion they would actually follow your advice?

All this makes me counter-intuitively, surprisingly optimistic and cheerful about our impending election because I love an elegant irony and what better day to remind them all that democracy really is just about one man: one vote, than Independence Day?

All those threats that voting for any one of the smaller parties will gift the Starmer troopers an easy victory are just that, empty threats. Because the truly wonderful thing about democracy is this ineluctable reality. On that inevitably grey July morning, when we stroll into a local school or village hall to collect our little slip of paper; when we review the list of names and parties and clutch that pencil to scrawl a big, fat X in a single box, we really will all be absolutely equal. Prince and pauper, braggart and beggar, each vote weighs no scruple of a scruple more or less than everyone else’s. We inhabit the world that Chartist and Suffragette alike wanted, and fought for.

It’s that purest of democratic truths that gets so annoyingly under the paper thin skin of journalists and politicians alike. They loathe, with a fourth division football fan’s passion, the mere idea that you and I do indeed think for ourselves. Their working lives are dedicated to forcing you to think like they do. They no longer debate nor persuade. They regard such things as quaint anachronisms. Instead they threaten, harangue and intimidate, hence all those pieces about the likely consequences of your vote and the ubiquitous sneering.

If you doubt me, ask yourself what fuelled the entire political response to the pandemic and why it was, most repugnantly, shared by all political parties. Under the cover of Covid, we were never allowed to think, never mind act or choose for ourselves. Yet just like Brexit, they haven’t learned a thing. The same disdain and conceit characterizes the campaigning by all the main political parties. In the teeth of potential overnight extinction as a party, Tory politicians continue to behave as though the choices they made then were wise, while the Labour Party, Greens and SNP would do it all again in a heartbeat. Where is their sense of responsibility never mind public contrition or shame? Without the sense of security the two party system guarantees, they would all be facing extinction.

I could produce a little litany here of political and media sneerers; nothing would be easier, and no doubt you could too, but wouldn’t we both feel a little grubby by association?

I’m not frightened by the idea that millions of us get to choose, I’m genuinely thrilled. I’ve seen enough of Planet A to value the British democratic gift of one man: one vote accordingly. So much so, that however tempted I am to spoil my ballot paper, or not to vote, because of the staggeringly unappetising quality of what’s on the main menu, I just don’t think I can bring myself to do it. It would feel like a betrayal of my own children, never mind my English Catholic and Irish Catholic ancestors, who only a few generations ago were denied that gift.

So I’ll wander into that village school with a broad smile on my face, confident in the belief that my fellow citizens will, just like me, take into account all manner of things we have seen or read, since our political representatives failed so dramatically and damagingly to represent anything but their own extraordinarily attenuated interests, in March 2020. I will joyfully embrace the reality that some will choose based on little more than historical preference or party loyalty, while others will plump for a specific, well-researched candidate. I’m fine with the idea that some will care so deeply about a single issue it alone will determine their choice, while others will even select their MP based on nothing more than a likeable face. Because that is what democracy always delivers – just as it did Brexit. 

Joe Nutt is the author of several books about the poetry of Donne, Milton and Shakespeare and a collection of essays, The Point of Poetry. His latest book, Teaching English for the Real World was published by John Catt in May 2020.