What is in Kelvin's Head?

Five Thoughts On Losing Elections (and a referendum)

31/01/2020
Everyone has their own speciality. Mine is losing elections.

It seems to have become a primary passtime. More than a hobby, less than a national identity but part of who I am.

I’ve lost elections in school, university, the church and civic society. I’ve not become president of my College student association, nor a Member of Parliament, nor a Councillor, nor a Rector of the Univerity of Glasgow and I’ve recently not become a bishop.

I am proficient at it. It is my own special skill. I’ve done it so often that I’m sure I’ve forgotten some of my most triumphant defeats.

I can’t say that losing elections is easy. Each comes with its own particular disappointment; its own lasting murmer of what might have been if only things had been a bit different.

But it is from this perspective that I want to say something about how to lose an election and in particular how to react to having lost one particular referendum.

For a significant moment occurs today. At 11 pm this evening Britain will leave the European Union – and become the only nation in world history ever to have declared economic sanctions against itself.

I was in favour of remaining for all the same reasons that I was in favour of Scotland remaining in the UK. I’m predisposed to think that we should be in anything.

I remain of the view that the poor in the UK will pay the highest price for coming out of the EU.

So I was on the losing side of this one. I mourn our departure from the EU.

As an experienced expert on losing elections then, I tentatively offer the following reflections on how to lose.
1. When you are beaten, it may be because the other side was better at it than you were.
  Oh, I know that this is difficult to accept. I’ve felt the pain of feeling robbed time and again. But one of the things I’ve learned from those who I’ve fought alongside in the liberal/left/pro-European corner of the political vineyard is that many of those I’ve been very close to just can’t accept the basic reality that those who have different ideas just might be better at getting them across. People who think differently might be clever. Might indeed be cleverer than thou. Accepting this hideous reality is the first step in coping with losing. It is far easier to claim that the other side cheated than that they were better. It is relatively rare that they did.
2. Change happens.
  New opportunites present themselves. As soon as the dust clears from one battle, the pathway to the next becomes clear. There’s no going back. The world only spins one way. But one of the features of the way the world spins is that change is still always going to be part of the journey.
  In 2005 I took no small pleasure in nearly doubling the Liberal Democrat vote in Stirling and knocking the SNP into fourth place. The fact is that the seat has been held by Labour, Conservative and now SNP members since then. And I took tiny scintilla of pleasure in seeing how it changed hands at the last election, even though it wasn’t a party I’ll ever vote for who won. Change has always happened and always will happen. Recognising this is the first step towards getting back on board and standing publicly for something again.
  I hope that the UK forges a path as close as possible to the EU and ultimately rejoins. I’m in the minority here but that’s what I hope for. And learning what one hopes for is a large part of poltical participation.
3. You don’t have to win an election to have an effect.
  Getting a higher turnout in an election is a good thing. Getting more votes for what you are standing for than people expected is a joy. Losing elections can be part of turning the tide in a wider movement for change. I cannot count the number of votes that those of us campaigning for equal marriage in the Scottish Epsicopal Church lost but each was a step along a journey that eventually led to change that has brought joy into the lives of people who didn’t know how much their hearts could sing. You are part of something. Try to see the bigger picture.
4. You don’t have to win an election for it to have an effect on you.
  I’ve been changed by all the elections that I’ve fought and mostly for the better. I’ve probably been changed for the better more by those I’ve lost than the few that I’ve won. Participation in an electoral system is an invitation to learn from others. I’ve learned skills of persuasion and learned that people are interested in original ideas no matter how off the wall they first seem to be. I’ve learned that being able to see over the horizon is no guarentee of electoral success but I’ve learned to see a little bit further over the horizon all the same. There’s much to be gained by standing. That isn’t invalidated by losing.
5. It is about winning, all the same.
  There’s a time and a place for bitter regret. And that place is never in public. The tough reality is that sometimes one simply has to suck it up and accept that one lost. Whether one wanted a particular democratic event or not, sometimes the fact remains staring us in the face that this time it was a loss.
  It is particularly difficult seeing people and organisations who claim to be hugely committed to democracy finding it so difficult to accept that the Brexit referendum didn’t go the way they expected it to. Yes, some of the reasons some people voted were about xenophobia. Yes, some of the reasons were to do with reasserting a sense of Englishness which has gone sour in recent years. Yes, some of the reasons for voting in the recent election were, however misplaced, about a sense of self-interest. But they were real feelings. Change won’t begin to happen until ideas emerge from the losing side that capture or recapture the hearts of those who voted differently.
  All elections are won on hope. Even hope that you despise.
If rightwing populists can win the hopes of people across the world then anyone can win the hopes of an electorate. But that won’t happen automatically. It needs imagination, inspiration and those prepared to take risks, dream dreams and stand up for what they themselves hope for in public.

And it needs people prepared to lose elections.

Until one day they win.
#brexit, elections, losing elections, politics, referendum

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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