UK Democracy: Real Options or merely private agendas of people we don't know?

Democracy: Real Options or merely private agendas?

After all the hype of weeks or even months of political campaigning, of being bombarded by mass media with all kinds of conflicting messages and half-truths, polling day comes and you head towards the polling station to do your duty and choose from a list of candidates that have been pre-selected for you. Not your real choices. Not that you have any say before, during or after the votes have been counted. You are heading to a polling station to sign a blank cheque. Your are not choosing policies. You are merely voting for a certain individual/individuals that are going to be making their own choices and are going to be paid for making their own choices. We call it Democracy and are constantly told how lucky we are to have somebody making decisions for us.

They say that Referenda are imperfect. What could be more imperfect than putting a piece of paper inside a box without knowing what you are really voting for? And we do this in every single election. We are sold smoke and mirrors and we buy them every time because we have been told that this is Democracy. People vote in elections for a myriad of reasons and do so most of the time without having a clue about the consequences of doing what we are doing. We call this 'the Civilised Way of doing things."

I don't feel represented. Every time there is an election, I have to make a gigantic effort to believe and very often when it comes to selecting candidates I don't believe that I am doing the right thing. In one of the latest elections, I chose one candidate in particular because he was an Independent and did not represent political parties that I have come to profoundly disagree with or even hate. Given the way the system is, I already knew who the winning candidate was going to be and therefore knew that voting for the said Independent candidate was the equivalent of throwing a piece of paper in a waste bin. It was not a vote because of conviction. It was a vote not to vote for what I am against. 

When we read or hear about people being disenfranchised, it is not surprising that more and more people are disenfranchised. The reason the EU Referendum was so successful in terms of numbers of voters was that it was a binary decision about one fundamental issue: To be or not to be Members of the European Union. Many people felt than in spite of the frustrations generated by elections they could really and truly have a say and that it was a one-off opportunity in which their votes would really mean something.