Post-election Blues

Well, if we had any suspicion about polls before, we certainly do now. And, if we needed any confirmation that politicians should tell us the truth and not play to the polls, we certainly have it now.

Like almost everyone else (including the Prime Minister), I expected another coalition and a bit of a mess for the months and years ahead – whichever party had won the right to form a government. I wondered how long we would continue to play ‘majority party’ games in a coalition world. And I pondered on what the role of the church would be under the rolling out of different scenarios.

Interestingly (for me, at least), what I intended to write following the election has not been changed by the outcome. Whichever party had ‘won’, the church’s remit would have been the same: to pray for those who govern, to recognize the will of the people as expressed in the election (although that is more complicated to order under the first-past-the-post system), to hold government to account (along with others) by questioning both policy and implementation, to defend the weak and speak for those whose voice is silenced, and to model how leaders might show an openness to listen and learn – changing their mind when necessary and appropriate.

Given the competition to out-do each other in being ‘hard’ on some issues – both economic and social – this critique would have been equally valid whichever party had been elected to govern. The Labour Party would have been as open to this as will, now, the Conservative Party.

Politics is a brutal business, and there are many bruised casualties of last Thursday’s vote. Those who put themselves forward for public office deserve our thanks and not our opprobrium. But, a further casualty of this election campaign was truth. We get the politics we deserve – and we go along with processes in which politicians play the games we allow them to play. The trading of policies almost daily was embarrassing and, sometimes, confusing. The economy might well be the basis on which elections are won or lost, but much of the rhetoric on all sides was competitive obfuscating mirage – and apparently based on the assumption that a market society (as opposed to a market economy) is what we have all now settled for. If we have, we are stuffed.

This is where we need to continue pressing our politicians for the vision that fires their policies, and the basis of that vision. And it is where we need to keep on questioning whether the economy is there for people, or people there for the economy. There is a fundamental visionary distinction there, but it is not always clear whether that distinction is recognised.

The Prime Minister and his colleagues now deserve and need our prayers as he and they negotiate a raft of contentious issues and play the parliamentary numbers game. It is going to be an interesting ride, but I suspect it is not going to be a comfortable one … for anyone.