What happens when you lose an election?

Spare a thought (and prayer) for the defeated.

Ross Hendry

Ross leads CARE, a Christian social policy charity.

A mayor reads an election result as a despondent candidate looks on.

Penny Mordaunt loses in Portsmouth.

BBC News.

Friday morning, 6 May 2005 I awoke wondering whether the past few months had been a bad dream, and contemplating what my future might hold. It was the day after the general election. ‘My’ party had won, but my result, while respectable, was a distant second place. So, in the wake of this election, I know what the vast majority of the 4,379 candidates who ran are feeling, which is why I would encourage us all to spare a thought and prayer for them.

Few people apart from close family and friends and the most ardent party activists will give much attention to the candidates who lost. Perhaps a few prominent politicians will be interviewed alongside pictures of the ex-cabinet member who lost their seat to a fresh-faced young candidate. But in general, life moves swiftly on, and those who lost will be quickly forgotten about.

It's understandable. We want to know what a new Government will do – who will be the leading figures shaping our lives over the next few years. If we do think about those who lost it will be in the context of the next competition – party leadership. Will there be a change in party leaders? Which ‘faction’ will come to dominate their party, and so on. This is an important consideration.

There will be hundreds if not thousands of candidates who will need to be reminded that their identity and worth is not in politics, being a candidate, or seeking the approval of local voters.

Of the 3,729 candidates not elected to sit in Parliament for the next five years many will face a similar mixture of emotions as I did on that morning in 2005. There may be regret and anger. I know for a long time I wondered whether there were things I could have done differently. Things I did not say or do that could have made a difference. “If we had planned to do this… if we could have avoided that…, should I have…” will be questions on the lips of many on Friday morning.

Personally, I also felt that there were things said and done against me that were deeply unfair, so I was also angry that the unjust had seemed to prevail. I could identify with the ancientthe ancient writer of the Psalms poetry who cried “why do the wicked prosper?” Politics is unfair and cruel. That is the reality. Too often it is not a meritocracy. Candidates lose, not because they are less able but because voters preferred another party or leader.

In these days following the election, I suspect there will be hundreds if not thousands of candidates who will need to be reminded that their identity and worth is not in politics, being a candidate, or seeking the approval of local voters. For me, I was immensely grateful for close friends and teachers who reminded me that my identity was in Jesus Christ. I was part of a holy nation, a royal priesthood and God’s special possession. God knows how those former candidates and MPs without that security will cope, which is why they need our prayers.

Being a candidate is hugely costly. Some do it for fun, others might be motivated by spite, but the great majority run because they want to serve others.

I also needed to learn what it meant to forgive. I felt that untrue claims and accusations had been made against me during the campaign, and tactics deployed that were designed to intimidate and mislead. I did feel that the result was unfair, and I was angry that my opponent and his team would stoop very low to win, But I also needed to learn how to forgive. To this day I believe I ran an honourable campaign, giving more respect than I received; and I would like to think I would have made a good MP. I believed God called me to run but I do not feel he let me down. That does not mean he still needed to teach me how to forgive my opponent. That is an ongoing process I am learning over time.

There will be many like me who will need to learn forgiveness in the weeks, months and years after the election. Like me, they may need to learn how to forgive opponents that hurt or wronged them, or learn how to forgive themselves, the electorate, or even God for not giving them their hearts desire.

And I'll pray that those who were defeated in this election will still have sense of calling to public service, despite their loss, if this is right for them. Being a candidate is hugely costly. Some do it for fun, others might be motivated by spite, but the great majority run because they want to serve others. We need to remember this in an age where people are increasingly cynical about politics and politicians.

I lived in the constituency I was running in for over four months before the election. The Monday after polling day I was back at the desk I had not seen for months. It took several months for me to slowly work out that God could still have a calling for me into the public square and that his plan was good.

There is evidence that in the current environment, good people are staying out of politics and public life because of the cost and the emotional toll it has on the individual and their family. I know firsthand some of what that means. But if good people are deterred, they leave a vacuum that will be filled by others of less capability and virtuous character. That would be a tragedy for our national life.

So, in the days after the election, I will intentionally remember how I felt nineteen years ago and send a card or text message to those who I know have lost, thanking them for their service and reminding them that God may still be calling them into public life and service, just in a different way. And I will pray for them, as I also pray for the new government, and the peace and prosperity of the UK in the next five years.

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28 November 2024

4 min read

Here's why we need to keep democracy holy

It's much more than a utilitarian deal that benefits the most.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A sign reading 'polling station' stands by the entrance to a church.

Red Dot on Unsplash.

One of the more ludicrous constitutional contributions of late has been the parliamentary petition, with well past two million signatures when I last looked, demanding another general election be called, because the Labour government, elected in July, has “gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election.”

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has surprised precisely no one by saying that he won’t be calling one. And so we’ll move on. But, in passing, what is truly breathtaking is how little our democracy is understood and, apparently, how unseriously democracy in the west is now taken. If that sounds unduly censorious, I have a two-word response: Two million!

Little time need be spent on demolishing the premise of this spurious petition, other than to wonder how many of those signatories would have appeared on one calling for, say, a fresh mandate after the coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg (where is he now? Ah yes) performed a massive reverse-ferret on a manifesto pledge not to raise university tuition fees.

Or how many of these same fearless electors believe the result of the Brexit referendum should be voided because of the lies of the Leave campaign, most notable the one painted on the side of Boris Johnson’s battle bus. But no – two million residual, self-righteous righties can only be mobilised against a Labour government.

This event none the less raises valid questions about what our democracy is (and is not) and why we should want to protect or even cherish it. These questions become the more critical because there’s a tangible feeling of slippage in western democracy, as if we’re growing a bit tired and even contemptuous of it.

There’s the ominous re-growth of nationalism across Europe. And not a few bien pensants – me included, to my shame – might admit to a feeling after Donald Trump’s re-election as US president that democracy is too important to be left to the people.

Slightly more seriously, we need to ask ourselves what the qualities of democracy are that we should seek to defend. The first of these is, quite obviously, the rule of law. Should a political actor seek to overthrow a democratically established electoral process, then that is a crime within the rule of law. Witness the horrors on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on January 6 2021.

That’s the Feast of the Epiphany as it happens, but nothing to do with the coming of wise men. With Trump at the centre of it. Draw your own democratic conclusions – and weep for the rule of law.

Natural justice is to ensure that vexatious petitions don’t overthrow legally elected governments, either by lobby or violence.

Again, why does this matter and what is it about democracy that we hold sacred, even holy? It can’t simply be that we hold dear a kind of hard utilitarian ideal that what we elect to do is for the benefit of most of the people, for most of the time, as decided by popular mandate among the demos.

If we believe in democracy, as I believe most of us do, we’re presented with a choice: We can look to secularism as a solution, universal Enlightenment principles built on citizenship and equality before the law. Or we can look to a multiculturist model, keeping the peace between essentially separate communities and the state.

Or we can shape something on Augustinian Christianity, that recognises the limits of political democracy, which would eschew undemocratic theocracy, but which would hold that no political order other than the Body of Christ (the Church) can claim divine authority.

We’re in classic Rowan Williams theological territory here: “[T]he Body of Christ is not a political order on the same level as others, competing for control, but a community that signifies, that points to a possible healed human world.”

Unsurprisingly, I buy that. Williams goes further to state this spiritual effect on the political environments in which we find ourselves is likely to be “sceptical and demystifying.” Which seems to be a reasonable manifesto in a democracy.

The principle of election can be a worrying one in theological terms. We don’t “elect” God, though some secularists would claim that the Godhead is our invention. Rather, it has sometimes been perceived to be the other way around historically.

Reformational Calvinism would hold, among many other things, the rather terrifying view that we’re elected by God. “The Elect” are those who will be saved, while the rest of us (I presume) can rot in hell. Little democracy there.

Less deterministically, a more modernist worldview would argue that the Christian faith, on which foundation western civilisation is built, offers a viable moral definition of the lawful state, with which politicians of all (democratic) persuasions can tackle issues of global justice.

One such issue of natural justice is to ensure that vexatious petitions don’t overthrow legally elected governments, either by lobby or violence. That’s an important aspect of Christian witness and will require true grit in in its application during the years ahead. That’s, if you will, our grit in the democratic oyster.