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Dear John,

This email reproduces my latest ‘Ugly Politix’ Substack piece for those of you who are not already subsribed there.

Why The Quiet Determination in One Old Man’s Emails Inspires me

Sundays in my house are relatively quiet. It’s a time when I can take a step back from the everyday pressures of running Open Britain to reflect on the week just gone and plan for the one to come. It’s an opportunity to catch up on all the non-urgent tasks banished to the back burner by more pressing issues. And it’s a time when I am able to go through the hundreds of emails we receive each week from supporters keen to give me their views on the work we do and the general state of politics in this country.

I get a regular supply of messages telling me that I am a fool, that our work is pointless, that we should be nicer to Nigel Farage or more critical of Keir Starmer. I get some that tell me I’m “part of the problem”, that I’m a fully paid-up member of some imagined Jewish cabal – always Jewish – that secretly runs the world. That “people like me” need to wake up to the existential threat our proud and mighty country somehow faces from the humble and distinctly un-mighty ragbag of desperate figures who arrive on our shores in small boats. I read all the messages we receive, but those ones I quickly put out of my mind.

Because I get other, much more wholesome ones too. Those make me think and often inspire me, much more than their authors might know. One regular correspondent in this category is someone I will call ‘Bill’.

I admit to feeling a little burst of joyous expectation when I see Bill’s name pop up in the inbox. He’s an elderly gentleman whose messages are always insightful and wise, and, I imagine, typed thoughtfully on a cherished old PC on a tidy desk in a quiet room full of books. (He may well bash them out on the latest iPhone while rehydrating after an energetic Zumba class, but I prefer my imagined scene.)

He tells me he has voted in every election for over sixty years. Every one. Local, national, European when we had them. He has watched governments rise and fall, seen promises made and broken, witnessed the same problems circle back like seasons – housing, healthcare, education – always just out of reach of real solutions. “I’m eighty-seven now,” he writes, “and I’ve never once felt my vote truly counted towards the government we got.”

There is something quietly devastating about this arithmetic. Sixty-three years of civic duty, of walking to polling stations rain or shine, of believing in the possibility of change, only to watch governments form with the support of thirty-five or forty percent of voters – governments that most people didn’t choose, making decisions for everyone. He mentions his grandchildren in passing – teenagers now, bright and engaged, asking him about climate change and university fees and whether their voices will matter when their time comes to vote (very soon, under the government’s new plans). “I want them to live in a democracy where every vote helps shape the governments that rule over us,” he tells me. “Not in this lottery we have with the current system.”

This is the quiet scandal of First Past the Post: not just that it distorts results, but that it teaches good, honest people that their voices don’t matter. How many brilliant ideas never make it to Parliament because they don’t fit neatly into Labour or Conservative boxes? How many problems persist not because they’re insoluble, but because the two-party system has no incentive to solve them? Under Proportional Representation, Bill’s careful vote – and his grandchildren’s future votes – would influence the government that emerges. Every vote would count, and a new, rich mix of voices would help shape the perspective of our Parliament. PR won’t fix everything overnight, but it will make everything fixable over time.

Bill often says, matter-of-factly, that he may not live to see this change, but he wants to do what he can to bring it closer. There is something profoundly moving about this – an act of faith not in his own future, but in everyone else’s. In the idea that democracy, when it works properly, gives each generation the tools to build something better than what came before. His grandchildren, and all the generations to come, deserve to inherit a system where their votes matter – where Parliament reflects the rich complexity of how people actually think and feel. They deserve the chance to fix what his and our generations couldn’t, with a system that will finally let them try. Bill’s words give me hope and feed my determination to push forward with our agenda – to ignore the trolls and the naysayers, to never give up, even when the odds are stacked against us. I hope they inspire you too, on this (hopefully peaceful) Sunday afternoon.

Thank you, as always, for supporting our work.

Mark Kieran

CEO, Open Britain
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