The working man fought tooth and nail for the right to vote. He marched, he rioted, he suffered indignities and beatings, and yet he persisted. He won, eventually. But what did he win? The right to scrawl an 'X' on a bit of paper every few years, usually in the direction of whichever snake oil salesman managed to tickle his fancy that week. Because, while he won the right to vote, he was never given the tools to use it properly.
You see, democracy isn't just about having a vote – it's about understanding what that vote means. And this is where the system, that great bastion of British fairness and justice, completely and utterly failed him. The education system, which should have equipped him with the knowledge to dissect policies, scrutinise candidates, and understand the machinations of governance, instead left him floundering in a swamp of soundbites, misinformation, and media manipulation. He can probably name Henry VIII’s wives but can’t explain the mechanics of a budget deficit. He can rattle off Pythagoras’ theorem but has no idea how tax bands work. He can regurgitate Shakespeare’s soliloquies but doesn’t know the difference between broadening the tax base to self-fund borrowing and increasing taxes.
And whose fault is that? Successive governments, of course – because an educated electorate is a dangerous electorate. Keep the masses ignorant, and you can sell them any old tosh. Promise the impossible, deny the obvious, shift blame like a street magician palming a coin. A public schooled in the art of critical thinking wouldn’t fall for the nonsense spewed by the likes of Johnson, Farage, and their ilk. They wouldn't swallow slogans like 'Take Back Control' or 'Get Brexit Done' without asking – control from whom, and at what cost? What does getting Brexit 'done' even mean?
Instead, our schools churn out generation after generation of politically illiterate citizens, armed with just enough knowledge to scrape by but not enough to challenge the grift that governs them. Politics and governance should be on the National Curriculum – not some half-hearted, tick-box exercise buried in citizenship lessons, but a proper, rigorous subject. Teach kids how the economy works, what a central bank does, how laws are made, the power of a manifesto promise versus the reality of governance. Explain the possible, the impossible, and the inevitable consequences of different policies. Let them debate, let them argue, let them question.
Take trickle-down economics – a con of the highest order, pushed as the gospel truth despite its utter failure to deliver anything but more wealth for those who already have it. Or population decline – a looming crisis caused by economic insecurity, rising living costs, and short-sighted policies that have made raising a family a financial impossibility for many. Then there’s taxation – how it funds public services, how cuts to those services impact society, and how the wealthy continually dodge their fair share while the working man shoulders the burden. These are things every voter should understand before stepping into the polling booth.
Then there’s the erosion of workers’ rights – another disaster born from a lack of political education. Trade unions, once the backbone of labour protections, are demonised in the press, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitation, stagnant wages, and insecure contracts. And let's not forget the privatisation scam – essential services like healthcare, water, and transport stripped of public accountability and handed over to profit-driven conglomerates, who then charge through the nose for declining standards.
Of course, the argument against this is always the same – we mustn't indoctrinate children. But the real indoctrination is what we have now – an education system that conditions young minds to accept politics as something that happens to them rather than something they have a stake in. Imagine if we gave them the tools to actually scrutinise policy instead of just choosing between red or blue based on tribalism.
The grim truth is that an electorate capable of spotting a fraudster from a hundred paces would be an existential threat to those in power. And so the cycle repeats – a deliberately underinformed public, duped into voting against its own interests time and again. And we call it democracy.
Take Reform, currently enjoying a surge in the polls. Ask a Reform supporter how much extra tax their policies would cost, and you’ll likely be met with a vacant stare – most haven’t read the manifesto and instead take Farage’s bile on GB News as gospel.
Reform’s tax plans would add nearly £90 billion a year to the bill: £41bn to raise the personal allowance to £20,000, £18bn to lift the higher rate threshold to £70,000, and more on top. Independent analyses suggest the real figure could be even higher. To cover this, they propose £150bn in cuts to public services, debt interest, and benefits – the same public services already on their knees (the largest spends are health and pensions). And just like Brexit, the experts warning this doesn’t add up are being ignored, despite being proven right before. Meanwhile, the tax cuts would overwhelmingly benefit higher earners, leaving those on lower incomes with little to show for it. In short, Reform's economic plan is a fiscal fantasy – but, as ever, people will vote for it anyway because they're swayed by immigrant-centred emotion, not facts.
As an aside, it's worth noting, ironically, that immigration has blunted some of the worst Brexit effect by widening the tax base. Tell a Reform voter that and you'll be accused of lying, despite it being glaringly obvious to the untrained mind. Naturally, the Reform supporter will insist, with no evidence at all, that all these immigrants are on benefits.
We won the vote. Now we needs the power to use it in an informed manner.
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