A Triumph for Democracy

Yes, I know, the UK election is a mess and a muddle and the voting arrangements were disastrous at some booths and now there will be shabby deals and so on and so on, (and on the missing-out-on-casting-a-vote fiasco, surely the intelligent thing to do is to move voting day to Saturday [geez, we Aussies could teach those Poms a thing or two {but will they listen? No.}]?)

Anyway I still think it was a wonderful election. The reason for my absurd and unfashionably positive attitude is the fact that, despite the worried mutterings of many on the left, (who I suspect would like to curtail the right to say what you like, if they possibly could, unless it agrees with them), free speech and democracy and the British public all proved themselves sensible and mature. Earlier, the nanny types screamed and said it was appalling that Nick Griffin had any kind of airing, but it turned out it was the best thing that could happen. Exposure to his hate filled garbage didn't affect the result at all (except perhaps to wake voters up to the fact that he was a nong and a nutter, not a political force so much as a mere reaction - in this case, to Labour's mismanagement of immigration). There were dire predictions about his chances, but in the event he didn't notch up a single win.

I remember hearing Marcia Langton, an Aboriginal activist and academic, put the much derided view that Australia's extreme right wing politician Pauline Hanson (now vanished from the scene, more or less - and thinking of moving to Britain) was doing everyone a favour by saying the things she said. As Langton saw it, it was much better to pull the scab off a wound and let all the pus out than to have a murky set of views festering away, unspoken and dangerous, beneath the crust of polite society.