Labour of love

Human society is so imperfect and downright unjust that I find maintaining the positivity for change to be a huge challenge. For those who have similar thoughts, we must remind ourselves that despite the horror of many current world events and the feeling that we’re regressing, humankind is succeeding in some metrics, such as global infant mortality rates, spread of communications networks, and I’m sure there are plenty of other examples.

I’m glued to the UK election coverage. I continue to be staggered that a party leader who has a history of fairness and openness is assassinated from all sides, whilst those doing the assassination maintain a loyalty to an out-of-touch offensive buffoon who could never in a billion years identify with the average person. We are conditioned into admiring the Boris Johnsons of this country, perhaps because one day people think they can emulate their status and money, when in fact the disdain shown towards us plebs is clear and harsh, epitomised perfectly by Johnson’s father’s pompous slur of the British on TV recently.

The tired mantra that Corbyn is unelectable holds no sway with me, as the Labour Party’s manifesto is very much electable, and that should be more important than any one individual. My proxy vote has been confirmed and will be cast in Cambridge. I’ll be unequivocally backing Labour, especially critical to do in that seat, which could be lost to the Liberal Democrats and their chequered history of aligning with right-wing policies. As passionate as I was and am about Brexit being a bad idea, I also don’t support the Liberal Democrat position on it, as it is blind to the feelings of millions, and risks being so undemocratic as to jeopardise people’s faith in politics for decades to come.

It feels that in this election, and modern societies in general, we’re fighting to instil values of kindness and empathy that should be there as the status quo, but are far from being present in sufficient quantity. If I was a praying man, I would be praying my butt off that the election results show that Brits are as empathetic as I hope they are, and that people will vote for the most inclusive policies. If not my view is that society is on quite a scary trajectory, and we may as well become a state of the USA now instead of prolonging a slow slide into worse social mobility, even more rampant inequality and a world controlled entirely by profit-making companies.