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.

Column

Character

Comment

2 May 2024

4 min read

How to react in an era of social media outrage

Media executions and the quality of mercy.

George Pitcher

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

A man in a suit stands on a gallery above a cavernous space in which are rows of desk

Huw Edwards stands above the BBC news room.

BBC.

The story of Huw Edwards presents challenges to anyone who wonders how to respond appropriately. The news anchor is back, on the news agenda rather than presenting it, having resigned from the BBC on “medical advice”. In news terms, it seems a long time ago – nearly a year – when stories emerged that he had paid a teenager for what are blushingly called “explicit images”.

His departure, rather belatedly said to have been inevitable, follows disclosures that he has continued to draw a very handsome BBC salary during his suspension from duty – and one that the corporation would rather not still be paying when it publishes its annual review of figures shortly.

The difficulties come when, putting aside prurience and distaste, one scrutinises why exactly the life and career of Edwards have been ruined. The police wasted little time last year in concluding that there was no evidence that a criminal offence had been committed. All that is left is a salacious whiff and the knowledge that Edwards has suffered a depressive breakdown of some sort

But that’s more than enough to make a major story in the era of peak social-media faux outrage. Think Philip Schofield, life ruined by stupidly lying about a fling with a much younger colleague (of consenting age). Think Caroline Flack, a reality actor with demonstrable mental health issues, hounded to her suicide. Think even the internet-sleuthing landslide that threatens to cover and suffocate comic Richard Gadd’s “true story” Netflix movie, Baby Reindeer.

While forgiveness liberates the forgiver (rather than necessarily the one being forgiven), Christians need to be wary of using forgiveness as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

So how to respond to the Edwards resignation? The question supposes that we must indeed respond and that might contain the principal point. A senior news anchor with the BBC is a public figure. As such, he (or she) needs to be trusted by the public. Consequently, Edwards is called to a higher standard of behaviour than that of his invisible viewers.

Serious people in serious jobs need to be taken seriously. And anyone caught with their pants down, literally or figuratively, cannot look serious.

Yet that still doesn’t supply us with a response (beyond “don’t be an idiot”). Actually, it rather complicates matters. It’s easier if a crime has been committed, because we can take refuge in justice, reparation for the victim and punishment for the perpetrator. None of this seems to be available in Edwards’ case.

Some will reach for forgiveness under these circumstances. But that’s insufficient, since for most of us Edwards has done nothing more than read the news off an autocue and speak for the nation during royal events.

We risk disempowering a real victim if we forgive on their behalf, so it’s inadequate to talk only of forgiveness in this circumstance. While forgiveness liberates the forgiver (rather than necessarily the one being forgiven), Christians need to be wary of using forgiveness as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

By contrast, “the quality of mercy is not strained” in this way through our mortal experience. It’s universal and unqualified.

In any event, forgiveness is a quality of compassion, the latter being the virtue to which we might most usefully aspire in response to the circumstances in which Edwards suffers. The root meaning of compassion is “to suffer with”, as in to share and, in doing so, profoundly to understand the suffering of another. In popular parlance, it might be to walk a mile in their boots.

To view the media execution of Edwards with compassion is to walk a mile in his boots and to accept, with humility, that we can be as fallible as him. Vitally, this is to show mercy rather than pity. The latter is filtered through human experience – Pieta is a Renaissance artistic meme, which invariably shows the Virgin Mary’s essential humanity at the deposition of her son from the cross.

By contrast, “the quality of mercy is not strained” in this way through our mortal experience. It’s universal and unqualified. Shakespeare’s famous line is given to Portia in The Merchant of Venice. One of the things it tells us is that to pity is human, but to be merciful is divine.

It’s from theological, cardinal virtues that mercy flows. But it’s born of compassion, which has its Christological source in the suffering (or Passion) of Christ, in which the human condition – sin, frailty, pain, death – is shared with the divine.

That’s a worldview that holds Huw Edwards in its gaze. It’s a wholly loving gaze that seeks to share his despair and failure, which is the ultimate act of compassion. Edith Cavell, the nurse who was shot as a spy in Flanders in the First Word War, came very close to it when she said before her execution: “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”

Edwards doesn’t (literally) face a firing squad, so direct comparison is invidious. But our response might still be a compassionate one. We may not be able to walk a mile in his boots. But we can try.