X marks the spot
Last week's election was a bit weird, wasn't it?
Growing up, everyone in my family voted. But they never talked about who they voted for. In fact, when I was very young, I thought it was an unspoken rule that you never discussed which party got your vote; this notion was perpetuated by ceremoniously hiding in the voting booth and covertly slipping your paper into the secret ballot box.
A few years later, it became clear to me that many people did talk openly about politics—we just didn’t in our wider family because it caused a ruckus.
In my house, there was no significant disagreement. My mam worked for the NHS for 30 years and lived through the diminutive pay rises for nurses while she and one other specialist nurse covered a radius of hundreds of miles, providing much-needed care for patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). My dad worked in waste management and later environmental services, including for the Environment Agency, so even at a very young age, I was aware of climate issues and how we can minimise our impact on the planet.
However, in our wider family, political opinions diverged, and my mam would joke that my grandparents ‘canceled each other out’ at the polling station. In my teens, I was (and still am) up for a good debate, so I would wind-up my grandad to no end about his Thatcherite opinions, fighting the typical fight of any politically-charged young person growing up in the North East listening to Rage Against the Machine amidst the downfall of local industry, normalisation of casual racism and wars in the Middle East.
Most of these debates were light-hearted, and I would typically get told to shut up and sent to watch Nickelodeon in the other room. However, for many families, politics is more than just a heated discussion topic; it can tear people apart. Lily O’Farrell’s podcast No Worries If Not has a great episode about what happens when families are destroyed by political beliefs, especially when misinformation and conspiracy theories take precedence over family ties.
Last week’s General Election saw a voter turnout of just 59.9%, down 7.4% from the previous election to result in the lowest turnout since 2001. For context, the Brexit Referendum drew a 72% turnout.
I’m not one to speculate about the specifics of why fewer people are voting, but I think one of the big answers to this issue lies in the disillusionment of young people.
There were people eligible to vote last week who could not remember life before Tory rule. This, to me, is crazy to consider, especially given I still feel like a young voter.
Fewer than half of 18-24-year-olds voted in the 2019 General Election, I will be interested to see if this number is higher or lower for the recent vote, but I suspect lower. If young people don’t vote, they are left to live with the consequences of decisions made by those who may not even live to see the results. A study in The New European poses that over four million Brexit voters have since passed away, likely older voters who backed the Leave campaign two-to-one.
Voting is a civil right and one we should exercise until our final moments on this planet. But if young people don’t turn up and older people vote in their own interests rather than those of next generations, what hope do we have for the future of the ballot?
The reality of this theory rang true in last week’s General Election, as the right-wing Reform Party picked up 14% of the vote share, acquiring its first-ever parliamentary seats and making milkshake-target, ale-quaffing Nigel Farage an MP for the first time in his 30-year political career. For context, this makes Reform the third biggest political party in the UK. This is a party with several candidates (including the one in my own constituency of Cramlington and Killingworth) who did not actually turn up to the count. In fact, Reform is now being pressured to prove some of their candidates were real.
Reform came second in my area. 9,454 people voted for a man who did not come to the count. He did not send me any leaflets, and his people did not knock on my door during the election campaign. There is no photo or biography of him on the party website. He is a faceless man who acquired over 20% of the vote share. I am absolutely dumbfounded.
I wonder how many of those who voted for Farage and his cronies will no longer be Earthside when the next election comes around? Or will we see the next generation of voters shift further right? It all depends on what happens under this new government, of course.
Whatever happens in the next four years, we must not stop talking about politics. Last week’s election taught us that complacency gives power to extremists, as those with radical views will always turn out to vote, regardless of whether you do too.
That’s why, unlike my own upbringing, I will talk about who I voted for with my child, and I will tell her why. I will explain to her whose interests I am voting in and what that means for the most vulnerable people in society. I will expose her to those who are less privileged than her and encourage her to develop empathy for people who do not receive the same opportunities as her. She can recognise her privilege while also understanding that being a female born and raised in the North East of England will bring many of its own struggles.
It’s okay to disagree, and debates will help improve our understanding and firmly establish our own political motivations. That being said, I know all too well how emotional these discussions can be. If you find it stressful to talk to family members or work colleagues about politics, then it’s fine to remove yourself from the situation to protect your own mental health.
If you want a less chaotic breakdown of what happened in last week’s General Election, I highly recommend
‘s Wor Room.
Last weekend, I ran the Great North 10k. I didn’t get a personal best, but I really enjoyed the day legging it around some of the most iconic landmarks Newcastle has to offer— including over the Tyne Bridge twice. I always recommend fledging GNR runners take on this route as preparation for the big day, and it was a humbling experience for me to say the least.
With that in mind, I am launching my fundraising campaign for this year’s GNR. As usual, I am running for Pancreatic Cancer UK, a charity which is very close to my heart following my mam’s premature passing in 2019.
Please consider donating to this fantastic cause. This small charity does incredible work carrying out research into the early detection of one of the most deadly cancers.
Other things I’ve enjoyed this week include:
📚 Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe - I absolutely loved this hilarious novel about a young woman who falls pregnant with her college professor and decides to embark on an interesting career with help from her pro-wrestler father. I was really sad when this ended, which is usually a sign of a very special book indeed.
🎥 MaXXXine - We went to the cinema to see the third installment of director Ti West’s horror franchise and, despite mixed reviews, I wasn’t disappointed. As usual, Mia Goth dominated the screen with her amazing performance. She really is the Scream Queen of this generation.
🎧I’m on Spotify!
If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:
💌 About this email
I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.
I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.
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We also had the ‘no politics at the dinner table’ mantra but strangely I was only ever aware that most of my family voted Labour?
The increasing support for the far right genuinely scares me, and still scared me way back in the BNP days - I feel surprised in some ways because I feel like young people are so politically active now but that’s possibly because I’m living in an echo chamber. I know plenty of people from my school days who have probably never voted or give some shpiel of ‘well they’re all liars’ or ‘I’m not educated enough to comment’.
I know a lot of this is related to culture, education, systematic issues etc but but I do think the more left parties are going to have to really reach out to people if they’re to reduce complacency - and unfortunately that includes the rest of us not leaning into the ‘if you voted in a way I don’t like, don’t talk to me’ which I see so often
Well done on the run, Ellen!
I’m all for voting for the vulnerable in society. I think we shouldn’t vote so much for ourselves but for those of the future too, so that are worse off, those that need change and support.
I include my family in this as my parents are living in a council house, mum on disability benefits and my sister is a single mum of two with a newborn baby in housing provided by a private landlord, but funded by housing benefit or whatever it is called these days. I can guarantee they voted for some extremist part that I will not name or didn’t vote at all, and so i always feel conflicted about this. Why oh why don’t they vote?
Why do they believe farage is going to help them? Honestly you are right about it not being a family friendly discussion anyway. I can’t even mention politics around them 😂