Ultra-processed politics fails to satisfy

No-hope manifestos, full of ugly policies, leave us craving something better.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is assistant priest at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London.

Three piles of ready-meals sit on a shelf. One stack is blue, the next yellow and the third red.

Party food.

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai

There are now less than two weeks to go before polling day, and the nation appears to have simultaneously reached the highest fever pitch of emotion and the absolute nadir of political scruple. The Tory campaign has been comically, awfully inept - announcements in the rain, D-Day, gambling fraud. The Labour campaign has been an odd blend of quasi-Confucian aphorisms (‘Stability is Change’…what is that!?) and a blank refusal to give much detail on any future plans and actions - almost offensive from a party that seems guaranteed to win a majority that would give it little resistance. The Lib Dem campaign has resembled a Centre Parks holiday, and I’m here for it!

The recent Question Time of political leaders perfectly encapsulated the grim reality of this election campaign. The anger towards Rishi Sunak was palpable, and his pathological inability to not be defensive and snippy shone through. A total lack of any emotion was shown towards Kier Starmer (a void that again was filled with more anger towards Rishi Sunak), and his militantly practiced refusal to actually say anything of substance. Ed Davey was quite charming actually; but not enough to make the whole viewing process anything but depressing.

Yet…

This is our situation, and we must deal with it. This is OUR election, and WE MUST engage with it. Alastair Campbell - one half of the most listened to political podcast in the UK - regularly calls for compulsory voting. The ad campaign reminding people (especially young people) to register to vote has been incessant. Even the Archbishop of York has written an open letter in the Sunday Express encouraging everyone to register and to exercise their democratic duty. Why? What for? I find the entire cadre unappealing to the point of being odious. Reading the manifestos I was struck by two realisations: the space between so many of the policies was miniscule, and they were so bloody ‘ugly’.

I don’t mean ugly like the loveless, jingoistic, cruel ramblings of Reform. The two main parties have produced manifestos that inspire no hope. They equate the fullness and completeness of the human social condition to the subtle movements of financial resources from one area to another. They are each proposing a almost identical economic foundation, with a few nods to the fact that ‘society’ and ‘human relations’ exist, like a Potemkin village designed to impress the visiting dignitary, ‘the voter’. Not only do they read like they were written by someone who cannot think five, maybe ten, years ahead; they read like they were written by someone who has a cold indifference to the transcendental concepts of ‘TRUTH’, ‘BEAUTY’, ‘GOOD’. The whole tenor of our political culture and conversation is the same three riffs on post-modern liberalism, played with dexterity and enthusiasm of a corpse.

If you feel passionately about your community, and you know the issues, and you have a candidate you believe in, vote. If none of this applies, don’t worry, and don’t let anyone shame you.

And yet I MUST vote? What for? Why must I be shamed into preforming the perfunctory routine of soul-destroying civic duty? Why must I be bullied into giving the correct sacrifice to the great and terrible God of ‘DEMOCRACY’ in the vain hope that this vicious, nihilistic titan of bureaucratic ineptitude might yet again bless the polis with five more years of alienation and sublimated resentment.

The Christian message, the Gospel, is not antithetical to politics. The Gospel of Christ is about one’s whole life - body, spirit, soul, relationships, friends, family, enemies, strangers, work, play, sickness, death - and so it cannot be divorced from politics, because as people who live in a society we must encounter the ‘political’ every day. However, the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom and not a Republic. Jesus does not answer the devious questions of the Pharisees with a markedly uninformative screed on updating tax legislation, he says to ‘Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’ He speaks to the people about radical charity, freedom from worry and stress about today, about a community of absolute loving relationship where everyone is a mother, and sister, and brother to everyone else.

I am called - just like I believe all people, as beloved creatures who’s end is being united with God in all eternity - to keep my eyes on the horizon of the absolute, the beautiful and peaceful Kingdom of Christ which is not for this world. This does not mean apathy towards politics or even to the current election. It does, however, mean that I cannot and will not be persuaded that finding this pathetic display of ineptitude, silence, exaggeration, and unpleasant divisiveness which we call a campaign, anything other than a waste of my time and energy. If you feel passionately about your community, and you know the issues, and you have a candidate you believe in, vote. If none of this applies, don’t worry, and don’t let anyone shame you. The Kingdom of God will not be built by the winner of the General Election. It will be built by Christ working through the love and relationships that form a community of charity and service…and you can’t legislate for that.

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General Election 24

Politics

18 June 2024

5 min read

The tale of two Hindu Prime Ministers

June 4th told a brief but bold story of Modi’s India. July 4th will reveal the mind of the UK.

Rahil Patel

Rahil is a former Hindu monk, and author of Found By Love. He is a Tutor and Speaker at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

official surround an open case containing an electronic voting terminal and cables.

Indian election officials unpack a voting machine.

@BruceDGilley on X.

After 44 days of voting across India, 640 million people entered 5.5 million election booths to choose who would be their next Prime Minister.

Finally, on June 4th the result was announced, and India had chosen the devout Hindu incumbent PM Narendra Modi.

But wait for the twist! Mr Modi announced way ahead of the elections that his ruling BJP party would win a significant majority of 400 seats out of the 543 in the Lower House. Many of the pollsters felt this was possible, among them Axis My India, the country’s most prominent polling company. Data-driven pollsters and an action-filled mass-media told the world that Mr Modi would have his thumping majority for a third consecutive term. Bafflingly not…

When the results were counted on June 4th it turned out that Mr Modi’s BJP managed a disappointing 292 seats, dropping it short of the majority needed to continue the status quo of Indian governance.

Pradeep Gupta, Founder and CEO of Axis My India, wept in front of media cameras, revealing to the hundreds of millions of voters that even after accurately predicting so many national and state elections, he can also get things terribly wrong.

The world media was largely shocked but couldn’t hide its glee. The Economist told readers on its front cover that Modi’s ethno-nationalist shortfall was a “triumph for democracy.” The Financial Times told its readers that Modi was “weakened”, and other headlines across the globe revealed that even the “most popular world leader” can be humbled.

Even though it was startling to most of those who kept an eye on this mammoth undertaking of democracy I was strikingly surprised to notice that no one claimed that the election was “rigged” or that there was “Russian interference” (or Chinese in the case of India)! It was simply accepted…alliances were struck and, within a day, 1.4 billion people in India moved ahead with Mr. Modi still as its PM, now heading the National Democratic Alliance parliamentary grouping. The smoothness of the political system after such a seismic surprise is quite astonishing to a “westerner” like me. In our “sophisticated” part of the world we seem to be confused as to who has won an election or even a referendum for that matter.

“Democracy” to many millions in India simply means, “elections” and in some towns and cities people queued for six hours to vote.

Mr Modi lost in the city of Ayodhya! This is where he consecrated the controversial Hindu temple on top of the ruins of a sixteenth century mosque that Hindu nationalists demolished in 1990. A disapproval by the people of the Hindu hub of Ayodhya is like saying that the Taliban have now decided to wave the rainbow flag… or that the state of Texas is now officially going full on vegan.

It’s interesting that no politician or media outlet echoed the chants and mantras of western elections or referendums in recent years and roared, “the people don’t know what they’ve voted for…so let’s do the vote again!” Quite strange for a nation whose GDP per capita is only $2,300…

350 million people in India live below the poverty line and I would go as far as to argue that 450 million of its inhabitants do not even know what the United Nations is let alone what it stands for. “Democracy” to many millions in India simply means, “elections” and in some towns and cities people queued for six hours to vote. Human Rights, Freedom of Expression or Religion are alien ideas when all you need is a meal.

It is humbling not just for Narendra Modi as the mass media have said in the west but even for keen observers here such as myself. That’s the first lesson.

The second lesson from this stunning outcome is to never ignore the people you think you can easily ignore…

It was the poor (even Hindus) whose homes were blatantly demolished to build the Hindu Temple in Ayodhya that went against Mr Modi. It was the farmers who protested for months for their financial security that decided that their leader is not really a man of the commoner but of the corporates. At least that’s the image Mr Modi gave them. About 55 per cent of India’s population receives an income related to the agriculture industry.

Finally, the Dalit (lowest caste) community didn’t vote the way the BJP expected. Even though their PM is from the lower Ghanchi caste they didn’t see in him any action suggesting that he is one of them.

At the beginning of his decade of rule Mr Modi cunningly utilised the fact that he is from a low caste background, a simple tea-selling family and not educated at Oxford or Stanford. And it worked.

But now the very people he cast a net over are beginning to peer through his fickle facade. “The axe convinced the trees in the forest that because its handle was made of wood it was one of them” is a Turkish proverb that comes to mind. Eventually, the trees catch on. When you fool people time and again, eventually they get the antibodies.

UK Prime Minister Sunak is also a devout Hindu who often uses the Hindu term dharma when he talks about ‘duty to his nation.’ And yet he is quite the opposite on many other accounts. Sunak is from a very educated and wealthy background. He went to Winchester School and then on to Oxford and ran a hedge fund before entering politics. He is liked by many world leaders and admired by HM Treasury, the government department he used to run. A ‘technocrat’ in every sense of the word and yet he is facing the same doubts and demands from the electorate – about integrity. I do not wish to isolate PM Sunak on the integrity chart but leaders and those with tall responsibilities attract a higher demand. Wisdom in the Christian Bible says, “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

June 4th told a brief and bold story of PM Narendra Modi’s India. July 4th will reveal the mind of the United Kingdom. How will we treat the people or politicians we disagree with? Dutch theologian and professor Benno Van Den Toren once told me that the minute you laugh at an idea you disagree with, is the exact moment you lose access to understanding what the individual or idea is trying to say. Will we seek to understand? Or simply win? The ruling class in India won for a decade whilst ignoring their opponents and as a result eventually lost their majority. As important as the result on July 4th in the UK is what happens after, how we steer our hearts and treat those who didn't vote as we did.

That is the humbling lesson to learn from the 640 million voters of India.