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Illustration: Annabel Westermann

Six months into the Conservative major­ity-government, and we’re already bom­barded with scaremongering that we are entering an era of perpetual Tory rule. Some commentators would have you think that this is the end of the left in Britain. Others will try and tell you that the result of the General Election was still a mistake; that in reality, there exists a mas­sive portion of the population that was cheated out of a victory, and now the Tories are going to rig the system to make that cheating legal. This is simply not true.

Last May, the Conservative Party achieved a popular vote of 36.9 per cent of ballots cast. This translated into 50.9 per cent of seats in the Commons. Inevitably, the argument of how a Proportional Representation system would have given a much more balanced result will present itself: but that debate has been settled. In 2011, 67.9 per cent of those voting in the referendum on whether or not to change to voting system firmly said ‘No’. ‘First-past-the-post’ is here to stay for now. As such, any political party worth their salt must work within the system, and not fantasise about what could have been if an unrealistic factor had been in play.

The reason for the Conservative victory was very simple. The majority of the people who turned out at the polling booths felt that the Conservatives were the party most similar to their political beliefs: or, by extension the party best suited to govern this country. That is the magic formula needed to win an election. It doesn’t require trickery or deception. However, the reason for the electoral boundary reform stems from the fact that even if the plurality of voters supported the Conservatives, this still only left them with a slim majority – less than the one they deserved.

Under the current constituency boundaries, the opponents of the Conservatives – most notably the Labour Party – require fewer votes per candidate in order to gain a parliamentary seat. The Conservative-dominated shires tend to have larger constituencies than the urban Labour strongholds. What this means is that voters in urban areas have a higher level of influence in the make-up of Parliament. The reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600, as well as the changing of the elec­toral map by standardising constituencies, is simply an exercise to rectify this irregularity that partially disenfranchises rural voters. 

In a country that wishes to call itself a modern democracy, it is paramount that at its base, there exists a principle that all voters have equal influence. Moreover, the ballot must be blind to institutional factors that might otherwise render voters unequal: class, race, and gender are just some examples. The only criterion that one must meet for casting a vote are holding a valid passport and living in this country, subject to restrictions on convicts. The electoral reform solely seeks to achieve the preservation of a fun­damental ideal of our democracy. Of note is the fact that, had the reforms had been in place be­fore the election, the Conservatives would only have increased their seats in Commons by 1.4 per cent. With such a paltry increase this cannot be called a power grab in any sense of the term. It is merely altering the current system to reflect the will of the voters to a greater degree.

Some, however, will still be unconvinced. They may point to the fact that only 66.1 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote, and argue that any vote would still not be legitimate. But this is simply untrue.

Indeed, it is vital that the importance of voting be stressed at every stage of education, and that as much should be done as possible to avoid disil­lusionment among voters. However, some people still forget, some are uninterested and some just don’t wish to bother. Furthermore, changing the voting system itself will not bring about a miraculous rise in the number of people voting. One just needs to look to the rest of the European Union to see that; my home, the Republic of Ireland, is a prime example. In 2011, with the collapse of the Irish government and in the midst of crisis, the turnout still only reached 70 per cent of the voting population This was a mere 3.9 per cent higher than the proportion last May. It is also a prime example of proportional representation in action, whereby, instead of any election manifesto being implemented, a coalition is formed. In this case, this is not only toxic for the junior party, but it also results in a compromise that no one actually voted on or for. 

If opposing parties wish to have a chance at gov­ernment, they need to return to basic principles. The way to win elections is not to lambast the suc­cessful party about a system that was nationally held to be the fairest. Any political party’s success marks the failure of another. Rather, it is to go out onto doorsteps with firm policies that unify both the party and its supporters, and appeals to the plurality of the population that wishes to vote. It is to meaningfully engage with those groups of people that feel that the current party does not do enough for them.

I have the height of respect for anyone of any political persuasion that braves the cruel weather and vicious dogs of Britain to convince people of the merits of their party. However, it’s not just about telling people to vote for a party, it’s about the party showing the people that it can be voted for.

This year, the Department for Education is implementing another set of reforms for modern languages GCSEs. The government wants to see a stronger emphasis on culture, more opportunities for bilingual learning and ‘translanguaging’ skills for a future, global workforce. Currently, the UK loses £48 billion per annum because of people lacking language skills needed for international trade. This will only increase if language teaching doesn’t improve concurrently, especially since, in 2014, the British Council found that three quarters of people in the UK were unable to speak one of the ten ‘most important languages for the country.’ 

The power of languages has also never been more evident. With the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War and the resettlement of many in Germany, Canada and Sweden, for example, volunteers have started to implement language learning schemes to allow for the integration of refugees. The Goethe Institut states that ‘language is the key to integration, to taking part in social life, to beginning studies or in the labour market.’ A Department for Education report in 2014 held that more than 1.1 million children in the UK have English as their second language, speaking a different language at home from in school. These children have a huge advantage both cognitively and in terms of the opportunities they will have in their futures, and it’s important to value that they do have another language, that these are ‘real languages, living languages’ as Leszek Borysiewicz, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and a bilingual, expressed it.

However, not only does the way in which languages are taught in school need to be altered radically, but the general attitude to speaking foreign languages needs to change, too. In a political climate where Donald Trump declared that Muslims should be banned from America, speaking a foreign language can become a badge of ‘otherness’ and even more than that, an acceptance of another, invasive culture. As early as 2012, political economist Will Hutton wrote that a “command of foreign language shows the wrong priorities” according to certain groups since “it shows a willingness to work hard at understanding another culture, its language and mores. Real Americans don’t do that.” Foreign languages, because they are invested with emotional attachments and historical and cultural legacies, can be seen as evidence of the fact that people have not integrated properly into society. But really, the opposite may be true: the statistic showing the number of bilingual children in British society reveals that the rest of us are sharing some of this culture and that there must be a continual exchange between the culture of our country and the cultures of our people. 

In April 2015, a study was published in Psychological Science suggesting that people perceive the world differently depending on the language in which they speak, something linguists have disputed for years. German-English bilinguals and monolinguals participated in it, showing that depending on language use, world view alters; due to a simple grammatical construction, German people tend to see actions as a whole such as walking to a car, whereas English speakers see only the action, walking. Depending on the language in which the German-English bilinguals were speaking, their perspective switched, perhaps proving in Panos Athanasopoulos’ words that the German worldview is ‘more holistic’ and raising another interesting point, that bilingual speakers can make ‘more rational and economic’ decisions in a second language, because first languages carry inherent biases. 

Speaking other languages and having a global perspective is becoming increasingly important in our world, something which is often overlooked or seen as controversial. Really, there are no reasons not to speak another language; not only does it change the way you think, or allow you to learn more about the world we live in, but – if that hasn’t convinced you – there are multiple studies which show that speaking more than one language has cognitive benefits too. Bilinguals cognitively age later and the onset of degenerative disorders linked to age also occurs up to five years later on average. For me, though, the ability to speak other languages is not important because of the associated cognitive benefits, but because it allows an exposure to a whole other way of life, a whole new way of thinking and the ability to talk to so many people in their own language – something which might not seem important in a world in which English is widely spoken, but must be, if the statistics concerning international trade are anything to go by. 

The government is aware that languages are vital to commerce, but the key point is being missed: that languages should be learnt for love and enjoyment, for personal interest and development rather than just governmental ambition. If they take this approach, maybe the ways in which languages are taught can finally be improved and the real advantages of speaking a different language disclosed. As Martin Hoffman once wrote, ‘to speak a single language is to be enclosed in one cultural possibility’.

On a cold day in January the 25-year-old Princess Elizabeth Tudor was crowned in Westminster Abbey. On the one hand much was familiar to the watching congregation: Mass was said in Latin, copious amounts of incense drifted from the Altar, and a Tudor was on the throne for the fifth time in 75 years. However, this image of stability disguised a world and a period riven with strife, both social and religious, which had much in common with the modern world. Britain debated bitterly its role in Europe, while the advancing Ottoman Empire created terrible fear across the continent of a great clash between Islam and Christianity. Finally Elizabeth’s coronation proved the ability of women to effectively maintain prominent positions in politics. All of these issues are topical in Britain today, facing as it does potential constitutional, religious and social upheaval in the second half of the decade, and Elizabeth’s reign provides an excellent model of how to approach them.

England in 1559 was just as split about its place in Europe as it is today. The contrast between the Catholic led mainland and the Protestant England could not decide on their position within the political hierarchy, either as the head of the free Protestant states, as Elizabeth’s father had imagined himself, or as a subordinate to the burgeoning power of Spain, as Mary’s marriage to King Philip II had seemed to imply. The coronation of Elizabeth would settle this question, at least to some degree, for another 200 years, with the trauma of the wars in the Netherlands and the Spanish Armada forcing the kingdom to look abroad, trading throughout the world and founding her first informal colony in the Americas, Newfoundland. Elizabeth’s coronation brought the kingdom to a settled view on the continent, turning it from a second rate European power into a kingdom which looked abroad for trade and exploration. With the increasing likelihood of the European referendum occurring later this year, Elizabeth’s reign stands as an example to a sharply divided nation of how Britain can stand as a self-confident power, either influencing European affairs, or moving beyond them entirely.

The coronation also marked a turning point in relations between the English-speaking world and Islam. Before her reign England maintained a view of Islam in line with the rest of Europe, as a heathen threat to Christianity, particularly Islam personified in the form of the Ottoman Empire, a great and expansionist power, which a century before had finally toppled the last outpost of the Roman Empire, Constantinople, once the most powerful city in Christendom. Elizabeth’s reign saw England start to reach out to the great Islamic powers in the west, forging trade deals with the Barbary States and the Ottomans themselves, with the establishment of the Levant Company, and the dispatching of William Harborne, the first English Ambassador to the Sultan. Elizabeth led a country that encouraged peace and trade with the Islamic world, and was so successful that Sultan Murad III reflected that Islam and Protestantism had ‘much more in common’ than either did with Spanish led Catholicism. When we look at relations today between Muslims in Europe, increasingly unfairly discriminated against on account of the brutal behaviour of the so called Caliphate, and the growing intolerance of men like Donald Trump or the Pegida movement, Elizabeth’s policy offers an entirely different – and ultimately more successful – method of managing relations between the mainstream forms of the great monotheistic religions.

The final thing that Elizabeth’s reign had in common with the modern world was her advancement of the perception of powerful women within society. Prominent women in England had, with rare exceptions, been ill-represented when in positions in power. Matilda the Empress was refused her rightful crown in 1135 on account of her Sex, Elizabeth Woodville was attacked as a witch, Guinevere, the imaginary, archetypal Queen of England, was known ultimately for committing adultery and by doing so bringing the Kingdom to ruin. Even Mary Tudor was trapped by this hostile view, forced to marry a Spanish King, and loathed for it. Elizabeth turned this attitude on its head, remaining unmarried, she ruled as well as any man, and better than many, bringing a measure of religious tolerance and external stability to England. It is not for nothing that her reign is remembered as a golden age. As we move into 2016 we will see elections in Scotland where each of the three major parties is led by a woman, but it stands to Elizabeth’s credit that this should not be an unusual state of affairs, she provided an example to stand alongside Joan of Arc and Livia Drusilla of the way in which women could be prominent in public life just as well as men could.