Kate Fleming

My Election Day Monologue on @TimesRadio. In praise of British democracy. It’s election day in the United Kingdom, a seminal event we too often take for granted. We also do it in a very British way.  There will be no armed guards at the polling stations. No intimidating mobs. Just paper and pencil, trusted tellers and friendly canvassers.  If the British people decide it’s time to change governments, that will happen quickly and without fuss. The military will not be mobilised. Barbed wire will not be arranged around public buildings. Defeated candidates will not be fleeing the country. Riot police will not be assembling on side streets.  But a removal van — something we’ve all had to use at some stage in our lives — will turn up sometime Friday morning to help the incumbent move out. Another will bring the belongings of the new prime minister and family.  A few words from the winner outside 10 Downing Street, a round of applause as he goes through the famous door — and the business of government continues as before. Even with a new broom there will be a sense of continuity. And calm.  Nobody will contest the overall integrity of the result, whatever minor challenges there are at the margins. The loser will concede defeat and wish the winner well. The winner will try to be magnanimous.  Nobody will be exiled. There will be no talk of being cheated, of a rigged election, or lawyers getting rich on endless court challenges. No mob will descend on the Palace of Westminster determined to overthrow the result. The pigeons will continue to peck away, undisturbed, on Parliament Square.  However people voted the result will be accepted. Folks will just get on with their lives and wait to see what the next government has in store for them.  Such a peaceful, uneventful, very British passage of power is to be treasured. It is perhaps THE distinguishing hallmark of democracy that power is passed in this way, without upheaval or protest, at the behest of the people.  Democracy requires a winner to be gracious and a loser to accept that they’ve lost, without quibble. That is the British way. It is not now true of that great democracy across the Atlantic.  It is also the case, if today heralds a change, that a centre right government will give way to a centre left one. Whatever the result the numbers in Parliament who might be deemed hard right or hard left will be de minimis. Pretty much irrelevant.  There is something quite British about that too. It will not be the case when that great democracy across the Channel votes on Sunday, where the extremes on both sides of the political divide are likely to make up almost two thirds of the National Assembly.  We broadcasters don’t do British party politics on election day. That can wait until you’ve voted and we know the result sometime after 10 o clock tonight.  So we will spend the next hour looking at elections in France and America, two countries with their own strong democratic traditions.  Also two countries, as we shall see, with democratic challenges we don’t face, whatever else may confront us.  They are our allies — fellow democrats in a world threatened by autocrats — and we must wish them well in overcoming their problems, as we tackle ours. While taking some comfort and pride from the fact that there is something quite special about our own British democracy.  So let us savour this important day.