I’m assuming you mean for voting, the least important thing you can do, politically.
It doesn’t matter much. Protest vote (if there’s a good protest vote available to you), spoil your ballot (if there’s something you want to say because it will be read by bored candidates), or stay at home (so that you don’t add to turnout). In the vanishingly unlikely event that your local Labour candidate is an actual leftist, vote for them.
For more meaningful action, whatever works for you. Protest, direct action, letter-writing. In the vanishingly unlikely event that your local Labour candidate is an actual leftist, campaign for them (and turn out to support them when the leadership inevitably comes for them).
Just don’t pretend that voting for the least worst option will give you better options in future. It will not.
Your post is quite representative of the Tory support base.
People other than this poster reading this. Great people fought and died in order for you to have this much civil power now. This is very much a case of using it or losing it. The ID requirements are baseless and just the beginning of that loss.
Go out and vote. At the very least reduce the chances we will be living in a dystopia. Believing it’s pointless is exactly what people who want to steal your future would like you to think. As then their job will be much simpler.
I grew up under Thatcher, looked on with disbelief in 1983, 1987 and 1992, and celebrated with almost everybody in 1997. Then they attacked single parents, loaded the NHS and schools up with PFI debt, failed to reregulate the banks and deliberately reinflated the housing bubble. Inequality continued rising and the Tories supported them every step of the way.
Voting for the least worst option means you end up with no good options. Do what you feel you have to at the ballot box but don’t pretend it means anything. If you won’t fight them, you’re helping bury us all.
You won’t get me to defend Labour. But I’m a realist and I still see potential for a good future. Your defeatism will almost certainly not get us anywhere but whatever hellhole we are headed to.
We see voting differently. I see voting as the beginning of a journey. It’s a very good entry point for people to understand the power balance within a society. It’s in a way why we teach mathematics in school. Not because we expect everyone to be a mathematician or to contribute to a change in mathematics. Though collectively it most certainly has had a very positive effective. See just how monstrously fast our technology has advanced since we started mass education.
A lot of people will just vote and be done. But what if 1% become deeply interested? What if they go on to get others interested? What percentage of the population do our ministers represent?
Honestly, since you brought your experience into this I’ll just say that for your age I’d hope for more wisdom. But this is no surprise.
