I won't be voting, thank you

Joyce MacMillan was right

I have voted a few times in my life. I never liked it much. I mean, I think democracy's a good idea and everything, only on those rare occasions that I have voted for a political party who have, like, won, they have quickly betrayed me and gone back on the policies that I wanted them to enact. And before we start, the right not to vote is part of the freedom to vote, m'okay.

I would vote Green, but the Patrick Harvey issue still bothers me. He's too much front and forward all the time, and I'd need a short memory not to recall what happened the last time a left-wing had one man giving it all that, with the rest of the party in his shadow. Nothing against wee Pat in himself, just a worry about a cult of personality. 

About a year ago, or after the referendum possibly, I did ask my friends to suggest which party I ought to support. On Facebook, and no-one stepped up to evangelise for any party. It was that time when everyone seemed to be joining some party or another (okay, mostly Greens and the SNP, but still...). I can't get past the idea that most political debate on social media is virtue signalling. 

Problem is, I am a reformist anarchist: this makes me disinclined to vote, and not voting, in a zen way or something, is the same as voting. Most political parties are too right wing for me, and I include socialists in this. I'd like to replace voting with a spot of activism: I campaigned for Govanhill Baths back in the day, and that, for a while, was satisfying. 

I call a plague on all the houses of politics, all of them. I'd like to see some collective action against the house of Cameron and Boris - it annoys me when Republicans rant against the monarchy when our elected politicians are more actively noxious - but I don't see the existing parties achieving this. The SNP has strands of neoliberal thought within its wide membership and policies and, while I was interested in the feminist party for a bit, they haven't got their message across to me. 

Time to roll up and tell me why I am wrong. I know I am: simultaneously believing that the state is inherently corrupt* and not wanting a revolution (on the grounds that they never work) is an unstable position. But fans of political parties: you bore me and have failed to convince me that I ought to do anything today that I don't do the rest of the time. 

*or perhaps... 'the current condition of the state has been corrupted'. I might think that the notion of the nation state is inherently corrupted.