Another round of local elections but this time the usual parties have fared less well. The two main parties of Conservative and Labour have lost significant numbers while the Liberal Democrats and Greens have been successful. Independent candidates have also done very well while the UKIP vote has all but collapsed.
The dust has not yet settled, indeed all of the results, as I wrote this were not yet in but already the experts have come out to give their opinion.
As always everyone tries to spin the result as a support for their own preferences. Somehow a clear swing from Brexit promoting parties to Remain parties is being framed as a clear request for government to just get on with leaving the EU. Such comments make a mockery of any expertise.
The truth is that there is very little that anyone can glean from an election result. It is impossible to know what everyone was thinking when they cast their vote, there are just too many people to ask, and all of us make our choice for our own reasons. It is a long perpetuated myth that somehow there is a collective will of the people and that there is some coming together of thought as the polling booths open.
The only thing we can be certain of in an election is that some parties got more votes than they did last time, while other parties got fewer and that someone is going to get elected. Experts may have the ear of politicians but they have no knowledge of what goes on inside the heads of voters. They cannot extrapolate a jumbled collection of intentions into a clear and concise critique of what has happened.
Experts are there only to fill air time and sell newspapers. They don’t know what has happened. They don’t know why you voted as you did. They are part of the circus that feeds the political machine.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 