We get the governments we deserve

Voting in parliamentary elections such as the recent Gorton and Denton by-election is an odd business. It has been said often enough that we get the governments we deserve and it seems obvious enough that this is so in spite of caveats.

The major UK political parties, Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, and SNP have over recent decades shown themselves to be some combination of untrustworthy, incompetent or ideologically absurd. Possibly all three. The Greens are merely absurd. We might add that Reform seems to be an unknown quantity at the moment.

If a political party shows itself to be democratically worthless, surely we are not being radical to suggest that the point of voting for the party disappears. Unfortunately, and as we know, it doesn’t work like that – far too many voters stick with worthless parties.

Why voters do that is a separate issue, they just do. Collectively we get the worthless political parties we deserve.

If we vote for a particular political party when we vote to elect an MP, there is an underlying assumption that other voters are sufficiently rational enough to make voting worthwhile. Otherwise we are liable to be confronted with the problem of voters who do not reject a worthless or even an ideologically malign political party.

Which leads us towards a conclusion that the competence or incompetence of voters matters rather a lot. To vote rationally requires an undefined but significant effort to acquire political antennae, an ability to recognise dubious claims, some relevant knowledge and an ability to analyse.

It also requires at least a basic understanding of what works and what doesn’t, some understanding of taxation and the difference between spending and investment, what is affordable and what is not, what is plausible and what is merely rhetoric.

Another approach is human instinct, the ability to see vanity, specious language, furtive responses, too much reliance on ideology or social fashions and above all – dishonesty. To do that, voters need to pay attention to the endless unfolding of political and social events.

But it isn’t like that. We have too many incompetent voters and we get the political parties and governments which reflect that, the governments we collectively deserve.