Tim Russo, who one certainly cannot accuse of being a “Bush Boy,” sent me Murray’s latest Guardian column with the following commentary:
Murray exhibits the predictable naivete of a person who wanders into the electorate after a career spent avoiding actual human beings. He’s shocked, repeat, shocked! that his fringe candidacy is attracting bigots.
Murray also makes a claim that the postal vote increase in his consitutency is some sign of massive impending vote fraud, which I am sure he will claim when he loses after earning something like four dozen votes.
Murray is learning what many of us have already noticed – political ideologies lie on a circle, not a spectrum. Move far enough left and you start attracting the far right.
I obviously haven’t got the hang of electoral politics yet. I keep meeting people and hoping they’re not going to vote for me. I was watching Jack Straw give one of his soapbox orations outside Marks & Spencer’s when the man standing next to me turned and said, “He’s talking rubbish, isn’t he?” I agreed, genuinely. “And you can tell he’s Jewish,” he added. “Look at his bloody nose.”
I argued but he wasn’t listening. “I’m not voting for him anyway,” he said. “I’m voting for that Craig Murray.” I tried to persuade him not to, though I don’t think I got through to him who I was. This politics stuff is pretty confusing.
Tough break, but fringe ideologies aren’t all that different. To his credit, Murray has always struck me as less of an anti-imperialist (well, western anyway), Marxism-lite ideologue than those who have flocked to him, so I would hope he’d pick up on this. Tim’s characterization is painfully accurate though, so I doubt the experience will be much of a revelation.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2040 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan founded Registan.net in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural factors shape risks and opportunities. Follow him on Twitter or drop him a line.
{ 2 comments }
The postal votes are in the UK are pretty wierd though. Definitely keep an eye out for a big spat after the election in one or two close run constituencies.
Seriously, if the practices involved in British postal voting were adopted in a Central Asian country, we’d all be busy having kittens here on registan.
Can you imagine, that political parties in the UK (all of them) are advising people to fill in their ballot paper and then post them not to the official returning officer, but to the parties themselves, who will graciously undertake to pass them on to the returning officer…
I don’t doubt it. It does sound like a pretty hinky way of doing vote-by-mail.
Back when Oregon was making the transition to all voting by mail, some people – mostly Republicans – threw a fit over the potential for fraud. It’s worked out okay, but probably because the entire system works that way.
It would make sense to me to have the ballots indicated as being postal votes. And, any ballots that have so much as been looked at by party officials should just be thrown out.