The occasional scrivener

Hell no, I won’t vote

Even though I’ve picked a candidate for the upcoming elections to the European Parliament, it’s increasingly unlikely that I will even cast a vote.

I haven’t heard anything that the EP has decided that has affected me as a citizen of the EU. The only thing I can recollect is a number of stories about MEPs collecting travel expenses and pocketing them. This is the body I’m supposed to elect?

“Ah, but if you’ve read more about the EU, you’d know that…” — well, guess what, I read the editorials of Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper every day, listen to P1 often, and subscribe to The Economist. I’m as clued-up politically as a citizen who’s also working full time and has a 2-year old at home can well be asked to be, and yet I still don’t know more about the EP. How can I make an informed decision then?

“But you have to vote, otherwise the extremists will…” — yeah right, a vote for a body that has no real influence will give extremists a voice. Get real. Political extremists are smarter than that.

“Democracy is a right and a privilege, your vote is precious…” — no it isn’t. I’d rather save my energy making decisions that will affect me and my family. The MEP doesn’t do this, nor should it. It’s a tacked on band-aid that the technocrats behind the Union have slapped on to give their tired, bureaucratic, mega-project some democratic gloss. The EU is not a democratic project. It’s an artificial counterweight to the USA that doesn’t have a deep popular support and probably never will.

Some parts of it are good: the free movement of trade, capital, and labour. Most parts are bad: the CAP, the intrusive bureaucracy, the Gallo-Teutonic haughtiness of its unelected leaders. If, by denying this patchwork of idealism and self-serving nationalism the legitimacy of my vote, I can help undermine its foundations and bring about a serious re-evaluations of the whole project, I’m glad. But my vote won’t count, whether I cast it or not.

Posted at 21:33, in the alt » politics category. Comments [0]
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