The Stages of Election Grief
On Thursday 12 December, the UK elected another Conservative government. I, along with much of the nation, am heartbroken.
These are the stages of Election Grief, and what we do now.
1. DENIAL
22:02 on the 12th of December.
The exit poll can’t be right. They’ve been wrong before. I mean sure, they got the last two elections right. But it’s such a small sample of the population as well. It’s only looking at 114 polling stations out of the 50 thousand around the country. And only every 10th voter in those. There’s no way it can be right. And there’s a margin of error. Maybe they have won but not by that much. Just go to bed and see how it looks in the morning. You might wake up surprised.
2. ANGER
07:06 on the 13th of December.
The absolute fucking cretins. We had a chance to begin undoing a decade of austerity, rising poverty, defunding of mental health services, deportations of people who had lived here their entire lives and other general Tory cuntery. But people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for that, because the billionaire-funded media has convinced everyone that a man who has dedicated his life to helping others is a communist, IRA loving Nazi who doesn’t know how maths works.
They lied and cheated and fueled racist tensions and IT FUCKING WORKED! People voted against policies that would improve their own lives, and the lives of those around them, because it was more important to them that we take back control of our borders and stop all the brown people coming over to work in the NH-fucking-S. I hope it’s worth paying £200 a month for your lifesaving medication just so that the doctor prescribing it to you is called Dr Smith and not Dr Shariff.
3. BARGAINING
14:27 on the 13th of December.
This election is actually a victory for remain. In the deepest of ironies, 52% of voters voted for second referendum parties. With tactical voting, the Left could have won. In Kensington, where Grenfell is, the Tories beat Labour by 150 votes. The Lib Dems got 9,312 votes. The Greens got 532. If people had swallowed their pride and voted Labour, we wouldn’t be in this position. If we had proportional representation, we wouldn’t be in this position. The Tories got 44% of the vote and 58% of the seats. How is that fair? Only one in five Britons voted for Boris. He doesn’t represent the majority of us by any means. This could have been different.
4. DEPRESSION
18:48 on the 14th of December.
My alarm went off at 10. I’m still in bed. I got up for a hangover poo around noon but that’s about it. I was so hopeful. I know the polls were saying it would be like this, but it didn’t feel like it would. It felt like people cared about the needy. Now I feel like I’ve skipped the last few days of insulin injections. I should probably get used to that. The Tories are going to allow the Americans to set UK drug prices. The NHS isn’t going to be able to afford them. They’re going to have to pass that price on to me. Onto all of us. My anxiety’s been on high alert for two days. I should look into getting a therapist. But the waiting list is months long. In some places it’s years.
I got a job offer on Friday. It’s a really good opportunity for me. I should feel elated. But people are emboldened by the language of the elected Prime Minister and are shouting abuse at Muslims in public. We live in a deeply racist country. The billionaire newspaper owners have convinced the working class that immigrants are the reason we don’t have the money to fund the NHS, when Amazon is only paying a 2% tax rate on their UK sales. They’ve mounted successful smear campaigns against Corbyn, Milliband and Brown, convincing everyone that they are unelectable socialists who want to hold a pillow to the Queen’s face until she stops struggling. And they’ll do it again to the next Labour leader. We’re fucked.
5. ACCEPTANCE
11:55 on the 15th of December.
God bless our country. God bless the Conservative Party. God bless our handsomest Prime Minister since Churchill: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. I can see now that he has saved us from five years of communist dystopia. Disabled people should get less than the minimum wage. Poverty wouldn’t exist if people could budget properly. We can extract the insulin I need from refugees before we send them back to where they came from.
Oh god. Sorry about that. I was just kicked in the head by a horse. But it’s okay, another horse just kicked me in the exact opposite side of my head and I’m better now.
Labour, and the wider left, were never going to win the election. All the polls said as much. But we chose to ignore them, as it’s easier to fight with hope in your heart than despair. They were forced to take an impossible position on Brexit. They risked losing Leave and Remain voters. They tried to keep them both, but they ended up losing large portions of both. If they had picked either side, they would have lost more of the other. It was a lose-lose.
We also can’t ignore the Corbyn in the room. Not that anyone is. I supported him wholeheartedly during the election. I like the man. I like his policies. I like that he cares. But he should have stepped down long ago. The media’s demonisation of him was incredibly successful, and part of that success was because there was truth to base it on. His response to the antisemitism within Labour was beyond poor. He did too little, too late. There’s a whole series of articles to write about his other failings as leader – but that’s well-trodden ground, so let’s look forward.
6. MOBILISE & TAKE ACTION
Labour’s economic policies are popular. Turns out, the majority of people in this country want socialism, as long as you don’t call it socialism. So here’s the good news. By the next election, Jeremy Corbyn will be gone, and Brexit will be done. The two main reasons people didn’t vote Labour will not exist. And the bad news: the billionaire owned media will continue to demonise anyone who wants to raise their taxes. So what can you do?
Join the Labour Party. There will be a leadership contest soon. Make sure the party doesn’t go back to the centre by voting for a Leftist candidate. Don’t let anyone let you believe that Labour lost because of their radical policies. There’s a terrifying movement within the party called Blue Labour, which is essentially socialism as long as you’re “from round here”. Do everything you can to squash that ideology. While you’re at it, join a union. The government isn’t going to fight for your rights as a worker, so you’re going to have to do it for yourself.
Talk to your friends and family about media literacy. Why do the papers vilify every Leftist Labour Leader? Who owns those papers? Why might they possibly be biased against someone who wants to raise their taxes? Political education is shit in the UK, and there’s a reason for that. It’s up to us to educate ourselves and each other.
Hold your MP to account. Democracy doesn’t end with your vote. Follow them on social media. Write to them. Check how they are voting on issues you care about. Ask them to vote a certain way if you know there’s a particular bill coming up in advance. They represent all of their constituents, not just the ones who voted for them. They might not take what you say into account. If they’re a front bencher they might not even listen. But do your bit.
Donate. Be it your food to your local food bank, your time to a charity, or your money to a worthy cause. Are you one of those people earning over £80,000 who said you wouldn’t mind paying extra tax under Labour? Donate the money you would have been taxed to help those who need it.
I’d like to end this with an uplifting message about how it’s all going to be okay because we have each other. But there isn’t one. We’re going to leave the EU. We’re going to negotiate a trade deal with the US, allowing them to set NHS drug prices. Social services will continue to be underfunded. We’ll keep selling arms to oppressive regimes in return for oil. We won’t do enough to lessen the effects of climate change. But we can’t stop trying.
Accepting the reality we live in doesn’t mean giving up.