Vote Dalek?

If they were playing fair, print media in the US/Australia/Canada would have waited until now to announce the results of the UK general election so it accompanied the right Doctor Who episode for those who don't know how to use the internet. "But what relevence does Doctor Who have to the UK election?" I hear you cry. Everything, at least superficially. When Gordon Brown starts publicly talking about David Tennant being his favourite Doctor instead of the economy or whatever, you know that Doctor Who has reached unprecedented levels of influence. This article sums up and provides links to most of the shenanigans. In response (to the shenanigans) Lawrence Miles suggested a "Simple electoral reform: the party with the most Doctor Whos in its election broadcast wins. (The BNP may have to exhume William Hartnell.)" Oh, and Britain's main television guide magazine thing, the Radio Times, brought back its "Vote Dalek" (What does that mean? Is that really what the Radio Times wants voters to do?) cover idea from 2005, this time allowing readers to choose the cover whose Dalek (2010 design) colour corresponded to their party of choice. In response, the Green Party released this ad (after the jump).

But Gordon Brown's attempt to court the ever-important Doctor Who fan vote either was unsuccessful or just didn't help him. Or, to look at it another way, not even the Doctor could save Britain from the Conservatives. The result of the election was more about hugging Winston Churchill (31.3) than voting Dalek (which would have involved electing the British National Party). The real Churchill did, after all, lead Britain's previous coalition government during World War II. I tend to be sceptical of memories of times of national unity, but a coalition between Labour and Conservative parties is impressive (this was I suppose a time when wars still had a unifying effect). But the one thing guaranteed to increase a leader's popularity even than executing a successful war is dying, which Churchill did between episodes two and three of The Romans (2.4). For many, Churchill's death was the unequivocal end to Britain's glorious imperial era, and the beginning of a new era of global unimportance and constant economic crisis. I don't know enough about Churchill's policies to know whether seeing the Doctor get all snuggly with him really is as offensive as his description of Marie Antoinette as a "charming woman" (13.3). Perhaps this provoked no criticism (that I've heard) because it was still one of the least offensive elements of "Victory of the Daleks", and wasn't even the worst of the flag-waving in that episode. But it was probably also because he is widely considered the greatest ever Briton, and certainly the greatest ever Prime Minister. Conservatism is nostalgia translated into political action/opinion. If that sounds like a pointless and silly exercise, you're probably not a conservative. Congratulations.

Which is why might it not entirely be run-for-the-hills time. Conservatism in Britain has less in common with the British National Party (and long may that continue to be the case), and more resembles Blackadder's description of Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister from 1766-68 (and the namesake of Pittsburgh):

Mrs Miggins: You'd better watch out, Mr Blackadder. Things are bound to change.
Blackadder: Not while Pitt the Elder's Prime Minister, they aren't. He's about as effective as a cat-flap in an elephant house. As long as his feet are warm and he gets a nice cup of milky tea in the sun before his morning nap, he doesn't bother anyone until his potty needs emptying.

Radicals are not conservatives, by definition. It's only because in America the "radical conservatives" all have TV shows, that we start to equate extreme-right and conservative. To paraphrase the Doctor in "Vampires of Venice" (31.6), what's so horrible that they're okay with us thinking they're [conservatives]? The term "conservative", which is a dirty word in Australian politics, becomes a polite euphemism for looneys, racists, megalomaniacs, corporate swindlers, radical clerics (never heard that term applied to non-Muslims, have you?) and fascists. Of course, large portions of the American public now believe "fascism" means "health-care", so calling radical right-wingers fascists would only confuse them and we wouldn't want that would we? But I digress. My point is that, if we continue to treat "Vote Dalek" as a metaphor, (a relatively small portion of) the British public didn't elect the Daleks, they elected the Time Lords.

Churchill died less than a year after Harold Wilson (Labour) was narrowly elected Prime Minister at the tender age of 48, just before Doctor Who's second season began, by abandoning much of Labour's traditional ideological rhetoric in favour of the promise of modernisation and progress. Tony Blair, at 43 (the youngest Prime Minister since 1812, and the same age as David Cameron and Nick Clegg are now), was elected in 1997 under the banner of "New Labour" - clearly another attempt to distance his party from the version that had languished in opposition since 1979. This is how two-party democracies seem to work. One party gets around a decade to try and make things work, whereupon the other party bounces back with a fresh face and the message that the incumbent's policies aren't working. It's a fight over the middle ground (remember that in America it's a fight over the right-of-the-middle ground), so there's not much place for ideology in that process. Where ideology does come into play is in the campaigns. The progressiver party says "Let's do things!" and the conservativer party says "No, that would be expensive." Unless the conservatives are in power, in which case it's more along the lines of "It's fine. Don't worry about it! Wouldn't you like some more money? No, not you. You get back to work." 

It is harder to be progressive, I think, because if you're not in office have to convince the electorate that changes are needed and you can provide them, and if you are incumbent then you have to convince the electorate that you made good changes and should be allowed to continue. Which is easier said than done, because all the conservatives have to do is scare the public a bit and point out problems in your new initiatives. And there will always be problems with new initiatives, and governments will never be able to do as much as they promised, because a system of checks and balances inherently favours inaction. What's potentially foreboding about the Conservative victory in Britain is that elections are often good indications of how elections in other places will go, in which case we won't get a full progressive decade in Australia or the United States. But what's encouraging is that Cameron's party barely even got a majority - there was no clear voter message, and certainly no mandate for full-on conservative government. Meaning that people wanted a change - because Labour had been in power for 13 years and not a lot of progress was going on - but that doesn't mean it's time to privatise everything and lock up gay people. What we may see, especially with this new coalition, is a new period of consensus politics in the UK. When Churchill was re-elected in 1951, he did not dismantle the welfare state set up by Atlee's Labour government - there was general agreement by leaders on both sides that the welfare state was what Britain needed; the Conservatives just convinced voters they could run it better. 13 years and several government scandals later, Wilson's Labour Party was able to proclaim it time for more social change (it was the Sixties, after all), and Labour stayed in power for most of the '60s and '70s. The Cameron(Clegg) government may well give an atrophied Left the chance to regroup. Hopefully New New Labour won't take 13 years.