Vote with your feet

[imomus]

There's a general election in Britain tomorrow. Am I voting in it? No. I don't even know what my electoral status is, and I don't really care. I haven't voted in a national election in Britain since... 1992? To be honest, I'm much more preoccupied with European issues than British ones these days. It's a matter of some importance to me, for instance, that France ratifies the European constitution with a Yes vote in the May 29th referendum. Whatever the accuracy of the comparison, Chirac is speaking a language that resonates with me emotionally when he calls the European constitution "the daughter of the 1789 revolution". I'm on tenterhooks about Turkey's accession to the EU, but I'm not holding my breath about Britain's adoption of the Euro. The Euro is great, but whether Britain is in or out of it matters very little.



I feel like a European and I feel like a Scot, but I don't really feel "British" any more. That national unit no longer computes for me. Call me "urbriotic": I feel a sense of place, and a sense of pride, in cities rather than nations. For the moment, Ich bin ein Berliner! Taking the train from Paris to Berlin this week I was once again struck by how a short train trip can change things more radically than any politician. The contrast couldn't be greater: Paris is beautiful, defined, dense, passionate, sexy, classical, stressful, volatile, Berlin is unfinished, amorphous, empty, relaxed, subcultural, calm, solid, stolid, serious. No politician would dare to suggest he could turn a Paris into a Berlin. Such things are beyond the power of mere humans, but any human can exchange Paris for Berlin or Berlin for Paris just by getting on a train. Trains, ships and planes, it seems, are more effective agents of political change than politicians.

Rather than voting at the ballot box, I've voted with my feet. Rather than militating for change in Britain, I've preferred to live elsewhere, to find ways of being which appeal to me more than the British way of being. It was selfish of me, I know. Life is too short, you see. Rather than beat my head against a brick wall, I've simply walked out the door. But I think I'm alienated from domestic politics for another reason: it "says nothing to me about my life". It seems unreal. Domestic politics is all about numbers. It's managerial. How much do we put into the tax rebate, how do we finance the health service and the transport system? Naturally these things have to be decided, and of course the answers will impact on the lives of the people who live in the country deciding them. But numbers seem incidental. They whirr away in the background, just like they do on my computer. Normally I don't notice them, even as I surf along, turning them into letters, or sounds, or pictures. Enormous anomalies in the numbers Gordon Brown juggles daily would make very little difference to my life, as long as the basic systems kept working.

It's the transnational issues, issues like global warming, which do matter to me, and will affect me wherever I live. But in domestic elections these issues are unfortunately downplayed, and all parties tend to say the same thing about them. They're so huge they seem best dealt with at European level anyway. And it may well be that we're seeing the last days of national-scale politics. Britain will eventually either integrate with the EU or integrate (in the unholy alliance I've called "Angrael") with the US, and only then will it be able to do something effective about an issue as big as climate change. (And obviously, you know, I hope Britain aligns fully with the EU on this issue, because the US is doing nothing about climate change.)



What really matters to me above all is not numbers, and not text, but texture: what I summed up in yesterday's interview with Marxy as "a way of being". Small incremental changes in national fortune or national policy really don't seem to matter much beside the way of being you experience when you arrive in a new land, a new city, a new culture. It's way of being which is crucial, and I believe that when you find a way of being you can live with, and you can love, everything else starts to flow in the right direction. Even when things go wrong, they go wrong in the right way. Even if people are poor and unemployed, if they have the right way of being it'll be fine. And of course the corollary is true too: if the way of being that prevails in a place is wrong, it won't matter how prosperous, peaceful or proud those people are, they'll just be richly, peacefully and proudly wrong.

I'm afraid I now feel that when I visit Britain. Whether rich or poor, successful or failing, Britain seems just wrong to me. It espouses values I don't espouse. Whatever history it might celebrate is wrong: I can never forgive it for failing to have an eighteenth century bourgeois revolution like the French one, or for failing to have a constitution, or failing to become a republic. Britain is just horribly wrong in so many ways that choosing a red, yellow or blue way of being wrong is pointless. Britain, as far as I'm concerned, is wrong in its attitude to the intellect, to sex, to art, to class, to the body, to the relationship between money and quality of life, to the relationship between work and play, to the relationship between itself and the US, or the relationship between peace and war, or between British people and foreigners, or between sunny days and cloudy days, or... well, I could go on and on, or alternatively I could just go, which is what I ended up doing.

Are any of the major political parties looking at Britain's essential wrongheadedness? What are they proposing to do about it? The answer is that if you really believed Britain was essentially wrong in its way of being, you wouldn't go into politics. You'd go into France, or Germany, or Japan, or India, or Tibet, or somewhere you felt things were less wrong. I mean, really, why be a satirist when you could be a satyr? Why be miserable when you could be happy? Why vote when you can walk? And why take the perspective that it's politicians who define a place, when it's so clearly ordinary people and their ways of being?

Comments

[no1herene-more.livejournal.com]

you use your blog to have your say politically, why not use the vote you were given.

it wasn't long ago that blacks and women were allowed the privelidge of voting. but if the majorities stop voting, that vote might not be there for them next election.. is it a privelidge, or a right? Doesn't matter, it *can* be taken away from you.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think two things have formed the attitude you're hearing here:

1. From the age of 19 to the age of 37 I lived under the most dismal series of "enemy governments" in the UK, Conservative governments. Of course I was going to try to see hope elsewhere than in party politics.

2. Throughout my life it's become easier and easier to travel, to relocate, to pick and choose your culture and your "way of being". To become a "mobile dissident".

So put those two factors together...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

oh, and

3. Throughout my life culture and information and what Marxists call superstructure have got more important than "base", or the raw economic stuff that national politics still focuses on.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Had I the resources, my partner and I would prefer to live in Europe in a hot second. Paris or Berlin or Florence or even London are far more aligned with my interests and tastes and political beliefs than the US is. We tried to emigrate to the EU in 2002 and were beaten back by bureaucracy, money and language barriers. Europe doesn't want me. France most certainly did not, not with 18% unemployment and my sketchy French. Great for being a tourist, no chance of a job. And no job, no work visa, no work visa, no staying past six months.

Consider yourself extremely lucky that your EU passport allows you to vote with your feet, legally. Thanks to those politicians, you get the phenomenal gift of access to casual, continental emigration among the rich pool of European culture as opposed to desperate, underground, illegal immigration, which is what those Moroccans cleaning hotel rooms get. And since I didn't have half a million dollars in the bank or a European parent or grandparent, or the desperation required to attempt illegal immigration, the EU is essentially closed to me.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I shall vote tomorrow, despite sharing 90% of your list of 'wrongs'. Changing the national psyche isn't, unfortunately, on the agenda.

You use the word 'managerial' - I think the word goes further than describing necessary decisions about taxation, funding etc. Britain is now a country that espouses corporate values throughout: we parrot management speaqk throughout all levels of government, we restructure/rightsize annually in the public and private sectors alike and worship short-termism to an extent that long-term planning has all but disappeared.

I think that it is symbolically important that we no longer have an 'Industrial Correspondent' on BBC rolling news broadcasts but do have half-hourly shares reports.

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

As a Scot, do you ever consider yourself a colonial?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're right, and I do appreciate how lucky I am. It's only been this way since 1993, when national borders came down and Europeans could move between countries as easily as Americans can between states. I moved to Paris almost immediately, in 1994.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think all Scots are vaguely or sharply aware of our ignominious capitulation to the English (through the neat little trick of putting James VI on the English throne). So, yes. Actually, one of Tony Blair's best acts was to give Scotland a parliament... which then proceeded to protect Scotland from his more conservative policies!

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

Do you want Scotland to be independent from England?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes. Alasdair Gray (http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk/) for President! I don't guarantee that I would come back and live there, but if there were a place for me as a Scottish man of letters, well, it would be tempting.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The 1707 Act of Union "agreed that the Scottish Council and Parliament should cease to exist and that there should be henceforth one government for the two countries. The Scots were to retain their own Presbyterian Church and their own legal system. Trade between the two countries was to be free and there was to be no legal differences between Scotsmen and Englishmen throughout the British Empire." Now, that's a bit like the Roman system, and it has to be said that the English, when they had an empire, didn't give the same privileges to Indians, for instance, just as the Americans aren't giving the same privileges to Iraqis or Afghans. They'd say this is because they're not a colonial power but liberating these nations into democracy, but the real reason is that they really only want the national resources opened up to transnational capital. The status of the citizens is secondary, and being conquered militarily by Americans doesn't make you American. If it did, it's unlikely the Americans would have invaded in the first place.

[no1herene-more.livejournal.com]

yeah i totally get what you're saying, and i don't think you're very unique in your position anymore, most of the people i know who are almost permanent travellers say pretty much exactly the same as you.

just adding another colour to it. i'm in australia where you have to vote, and from that i feel the security that I will always have to know a little about local politics and i will always have a say in the way that such a young country shapes and forms.

no promises anyone will actually listen to me, but atleast they can't ignore my vote.

i'm just adding as i say another depth to what you're saying because i've heard many of my friends make similar but much less thought out arguments to yours.

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

President?

You don't think they'd dig up some descendant of the Stuarts and prop him on the Stone of Scone? I seem to remember that one of the people who stole the Stone back in the day resigned from the SNP because they were too royalist for his liking. Well, a little bit of internet research told me that the first Suart (a foodbearer in the court of the King of Scotland, apparently) was named Flaald. Wouldn't it be worth it to have a king if he was named King Flaald the Third? Or is monarchy in the modern era stupid enough without compounding it with such foolishness?

[no1herene-more.livejournal.com]

really?

to me a national and state election is about telling the government what issues you expect them to care about... do we want free education and good health systems? or do we want to increase the gap between classes and disadvantage single parents?

Australia used to have amazing health, public transport and education systems but in the last 15 years they've been sold off or eroded or just dismantled according to who was voted for. I see our country as still very young and fragile and very isolated from other countries and their politics, which has some real benefits and real setbacks. I see the way our society votes as physicaly changing the landscape i live in.

again of course, if you're always travelling it's difficult to give a shit how much a tertiary education costs now, or how many kindergartens will be closed.

[no1herene-more.livejournal.com]

how difficult is it to get by in paris with little french and little money? I am lucky enough to hold an Irish EU passport but am still unsure how best to use it. After living in Japan i'm thinking 'somewhere they speak english' might be preferable

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

I have a (crackpot) theory that there wasn't a reason for the invasion of Iraq other than that there were just some people who really, really wanted to invade it. That for a number of people in the current US administration it had developed into an obsession no more rational than obsessions generally are. I think that's the reason why they keep trotting out new rationales for the invasion every few months, it's not that they're hiding something dark and sinister, but that they simply had no good reason to invade.

Remember how Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq after 9/11 because there were so many good targets? I think that was still the basic idea when they actually invaded.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was shocked at how expensive Paris was this time. A lunchtime dish that would cost €5 in Berlin costs €10 or more in Paris. Blame the tourists, and for the tourists blame the beauty.

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

There's astonishingly little to choose from in this election and the mood amongst many of my friends is one of resignation. The meh generation perhaps. I could follow Eno's suggestion and vote Liberal Democrat. This makes some sense given their record on the Iraq war, asylum and so forth. But even they are shying away from discussion of the European constitution and greater integration, which I favour. It was interesting to see Charles Kennedy reciprocating (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1459509,00.html) by stating that Station to Station would be the one record that he'd grab in an emergency, but holding Heroes in the photo.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Don't know how much you've been following the campaign but, thinking about it all further, if there were two key themes throughout then they were Iraq and race (the issue of foreigness and whether Britain is being 'swamped'). The Iraq question is moot as the two main parties both agree on the outcome but just quibble about the process used to get there.

Race however has been on the agenda for a long time. You say, rightly 'No politician would dare to suggest he could turn a Paris into a Berlin'. But that is exactly what Britons seem to fear, that 'foreigners' have a mind to somehow steal Britishness. While racism exists everywhere this paranoia seems particularly strong in Britain (England especially). Am I wrong? If not, then any ideas why this is?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was listening to a conversation at the airport as we queued for a Ryanair flight. An Australian was befriending an elderly British couple. The way he did this was to assume they were right wing and to make some political observations that would allow him to bond with them, so he went for the jugular, raising two issues calculated to appeal: how Britain is better off outside the Euro mechanism, and how the Edgware Road is "like Calcutta these days". And it worked. He got the friendly response from the elderly couple, although I almost turned round and kicked him.

The irony is that I really think that three or four decades ago British people would not have rushed to make political small talk with strangers. They'd be like my father, and do backwards summersaults to avoid discussing contentious political issues, especially with strangers.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

...And, to take that thought further and answer your question, I think that Britain has changed, and it's become Nastyland, a place where it's okay to be nasty about the poor, people from different cultures, etc. And if we have to pin the blame for this change on any one individual, let's pick Mr Nasty himself, Rupert Murdoch, who owns 80% of the UK press. Who can I vote for if I don't want Britain to be "swamped" by Mr Nasty and his minions? Oh, right, nobody.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Very true about the change in conversational conventions.

The - mistaken - assumption of shared values is commonplace: I have been engaged in conversation over the last few weeks by people who have indulged in extraordinarily negative stereotyping on the subject of gypsies, muslims (with particular venom), migrant workers from Eastern Europe and, ironically, Australians. The look on their faces when I haven't immediately acquiesced leads me to believe they think that they're on safe territory.

A bizarre aspect of this election has been the BNP's targeting of some of the Sikh and West Indian communities as allies in their campaign against muslims. With some success I believe. I have a lot of personal connections with the Asian community and am often surprised the level of racism within it. It's a bizarre world. I'm probably just being naive.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Rupert Murdoch has had a foul effect on British political life, but don't underestimate the impact of the equally revolting Daily Mail and its stable. Increasingly the news/political agenda is entirely set by these two branches of the media. If BBC/ITV decide to cover immigration 'fairly' or not doesn't matter, that immigration is the issue has already been decided by the leader writers of the Sun and the Mail.

Neither of the two parties has any incentive to limit their powers - too much to gain or lose by the battle.

For heaven's sake see sense

[(Anonymous)]

These views are so out-of-date I was waiting for a joke about British Rail. Or the food being bad, and the charts being full of Roger Whittaker. You seem to ignore all problems in any country where you fancy the women and most of this blog illuminates how you deal with authority more than Britain today. The majority of British people happily and thankfully ignore its 'attitudes' (which are the most diverse in Europe) as permission-seeking is not so important to them. How can you forget how Britain embraces the misfit while, at the same time, can rid the world of true bastards? What other country left their former colonies when their time was up, and still as friends! Shit-obsessed, Germany stamps out misfits making 'street art' in squats while Britain gave us Bowie. The flavour and consistency you admire in France or Japan is another twist to their mind-withering insularity. I suspect you'll return to sanity once you have children.

Re: For heaven's sake see sense

[(Anonymous)]

Nice to see Robert Kilroy-Silk making an appearance.

This anonymity seems to be catching.