Democracy? What does it mean?
Thursday, May 7th, 2026, some citizens in the ‘UK’ are going to the polls. This means either sending in a pre-arranged postal vote, or going to a local centre which acts as a polling station for the day. The local centres could be a school, a church (but not a high church, more usually a Methodist church or similar), a leisure centre, also a synagogue in areas with a high percentage of Jewish inhabitants, but mosques are not used as polling stations.
So complicated it is between the old and the new in the long standing county councils, borough councils, the newly formed ‘Parliaments’ of devolved government from New Labour, and the new mayoral position of London, now expanded into mayoral elections by the people for large cities, like Manchester, that 2026 would be a good time to take stock of this electoral chaos.
The range of devolved governmental categories (societal functions which require governance) range through health, education, energy, transport, oh so many, and all fundamental to life in the twenty-first century. The range of political parties standing in each election is also oh so many, all with their own views on all the different functions of society. The range of voting options from lifelong supporter to protest vote, also so many. And the option to vote or not vote at all, also skews any coherent outcome. The voting turnout for all the different devolved ‘Parliaments, the county councils, the local councils, and the Mayoral elections varies in percentage, but nowhere will be 100%. Possibly overall, if an ethnic-religious-politics poll were taken, Muslim voters and those voting for Gaza would form the highest respondents to the jewel in the Crown of the ‘UK’, of democracy.
By electoral event, is the elections to the Welsh Senedd going to have the highest turnout? And will Plaid Cymru be elected over Reform, or Reform over Plaid? Either way, Wales is where the traction is. Wales is where the citizens are speaking Welsh (a beautiful language) and returning their landscape to native names, and the schools to being Welsh speaking, regardless of any individual student or their household. You just have to be on board with the governance. And that is governance. Yes possibly the Welsh polling stations will have the highest number of participants, which means the fewest number of those refusing to put a cross on a paper.
Back in 500s BCE Athens, where Cleisthenes established the first model of democracy, things were a little different to today. The unexpected revenue from a silver mine, a nice climate, and a manageable size of central Athens for just a few. It is the phrase ‘being roped in’ which this blog wishes to point out, after listening to days of news items on just how many people in the ‘UK’ are disillusioned with politics and not intending to vote at all. In Athens 2,500 years ago, to be ‘roped in’ meant literally that, and for the reason to ensure that all those within democracy voted.
This was not citizens of the whole world, because the known world was very small to the Athenians of the 500s BCE, and only male citizens of Athens, not women, metics (foreign tradesmen), or slaves. Voting was direct on policies, as was the requirement to serve in the government roles, there was no voting for someone or something, it was all direct, and all carried out in the surrounds of the city state of that ancient Mediterranean lands.
To ensure no young men were hanging around in the agora (market place, the centre of life in the ancient world), slaves would pass a long rope around dipped in red dye to round up those young men and herd them towards the Pnyx Hill to participate in the Assembly, whether they liked it or not, and many didn’t. Anyone found with red dye on their clothes or arm would be fined.
So, is that democracy? Well, yes, from the original. And if not the original, then what is there?
So in this catastrophic collapse of all things governmental and societal in the ‘UK’, what simpler way of restoring some clarity than making voting compulsory? How hard is it to put a cross on a paper? Or even to ‘spoil the vote’ which here in the ‘UK’ means putting a rip on the paper or a line through it to show the human is voting for no one? If the Labour government, while it is in power, wished to restore some electoral clarity, in times where there is none, then why not pass a law that every citizen is required to make some mark on the ballot paper?
Or if that is not possible, or seen as too onerous for the citizens of Britain, why not abolish democracy altogether? What is the alternative? With the disintegration of the established parties looming, and the many new parties rising but with no governmental coherence, now would be the time to rethink this fairly awkward situation where the ‘UK’ Parliament looks global and believes it can bring democracy to the world, yet its own electoral scaffolding is collapsing.