And so it begins again. The vacillations of an election cycle arrive once more as things gear up for Scottish, Welsh, and English local elections next May.
For non-Scots, Holyrood elections bring the added complication of whether to participate. If Edinburgh is all but a middle-class English colony north of the border, wouldn’t political conquest at the ballot box cement the death of Scottishness in Scotland’s capital?
But I suspect otherwise. Edinburgh is divided concentrically by bank balances: the city centre’s hotels and tourist traps, then student houses and wealthier Scottish residents, with Edinburgh natives priced out to the city boundaries. West Granton is a foreign country. Segregation by the size of your wallet.
Democratic engagement should prove the remedy, through involvement in decisions made of students and locals alike—civic communities borne of civic responsibilities. Otherwise, students retreat into evenings talking to Shein aesthetes and midnight marches to Cowgate, and disengage from their adopted, if temporary, environment. To abstain from the democratic process in Scotland for fear of trampling on Edinburgh natives would in fact surrender Edinburgh to its present state, that middle-class English colony.
But more crucially, next year’s election also poses the chance to reassert stability in British politics, beyond the obvious opportunity to have a say in the nation’s governance.
The inertia dogging British politics of late, the perception of government impotence, should not be seen simply as an oddity downstream of incompetence. The velocity of the modern news cycle demands it. In a slower, analogue news environment, voting was often the only concrete engagement with government an individual would take. Now, the information is unending, the anger perennial, the influence of public opinion taking over.
Students, as digital natives, are at the sharp end. Previous generations had to make the effort to be political—marches, strikes. Today’s youth politics includes the effortless slogan on an Instagram story, the ease of the cynical TikTok. This is our politics, and it’s constant. Democracy is no longer a cold war turning hot every five years; these days, we’re political guerillas.
But our institutions still operate as a typical representative democracy. So they butt heads with the discourse, the former too stultified to catch the latter, leading to the sensation of limbo, that nothing-works feeling lingering over the country. Voter turnout in 2024 was the lowest since the 2001 general election. It’s trite, but true, to assert that ineptitude breeds apathy. We all see the problems, and they’re too slow to fix it.
Discourse and institution need to be in step. A new system won’t quickly emerge, and any such system’s merits need a forum far greater than this article to be debated. So instead we must step back into the present systems. And to vote is the foremost way to do so.
The nature of our politics is stagnation, the essence of our debate weariness. To vote ensures the representation of today’s discourse in yesterday’s institutions. Because, like it or not, they’ll still be here tomorrow.
“Scottish Parliament Debating Chamber 2” by Colin is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Students’ Shared Civic Duty in the Holyrood Elections
And so it begins again. The vacillations of an election cycle arrive once more as things gear up for Scottish, Welsh, and English local elections next May.
For non-Scots, Holyrood elections bring the added complication of whether to participate. If Edinburgh is all but a middle-class English colony north of the border, wouldn’t political conquest at the ballot box cement the death of Scottishness in Scotland’s capital?
But I suspect otherwise. Edinburgh is divided concentrically by bank balances: the city centre’s hotels and tourist traps, then student houses and wealthier Scottish residents, with Edinburgh natives priced out to the city boundaries. West Granton is a foreign country. Segregation by the size of your wallet.
Democratic engagement should prove the remedy, through involvement in decisions made of students and locals alike—civic communities borne of civic responsibilities. Otherwise, students retreat into evenings talking to Shein aesthetes and midnight marches to Cowgate, and disengage from their adopted, if temporary, environment. To abstain from the democratic process in Scotland for fear of trampling on Edinburgh natives would in fact surrender Edinburgh to its present state, that middle-class English colony.
But more crucially, next year’s election also poses the chance to reassert stability in British politics, beyond the obvious opportunity to have a say in the nation’s governance.
The inertia dogging British politics of late, the perception of government impotence, should not be seen simply as an oddity downstream of incompetence. The velocity of the modern news cycle demands it. In a slower, analogue news environment, voting was often the only concrete engagement with government an individual would take. Now, the information is unending, the anger perennial, the influence of public opinion taking over.
Students, as digital natives, are at the sharp end. Previous generations had to make the effort to be political—marches, strikes. Today’s youth politics includes the effortless slogan on an Instagram story, the ease of the cynical TikTok. This is our politics, and it’s constant. Democracy is no longer a cold war turning hot every five years; these days, we’re political guerillas.
But our institutions still operate as a typical representative democracy. So they butt heads with the discourse, the former too stultified to catch the latter, leading to the sensation of limbo, that nothing-works feeling lingering over the country. Voter turnout in 2024 was the lowest since the 2001 general election. It’s trite, but true, to assert that ineptitude breeds apathy. We all see the problems, and they’re too slow to fix it.
Discourse and institution need to be in step. A new system won’t quickly emerge, and any such system’s merits need a forum far greater than this article to be debated. So instead we must step back into the present systems. And to vote is the foremost way to do so.
The nature of our politics is stagnation, the essence of our debate weariness. To vote ensures the representation of today’s discourse in yesterday’s institutions. Because, like it or not, they’ll still be here tomorrow.
“Scottish Parliament Debating Chamber 2” by Colin is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Share this:
Like this:
Related