Change We Can’t Believe In: When Voters Just Want Something Different

How 2024 Became the Year of Desperate, Chaotic Political Overhaul.

Photo by Red Dot on Unsplash

Before we dive too deeply into this post, I’d like you to throw your mind back. Back to July of this year, when the sun was shining, the air smelled faintly of barbecues and sunscreen, and the mood—at least superficially—felt lighter. Back to a time before the gloom of autumn descended and everyone collectively realised, yet again, that the year was rushing towards its miserable conclusion.

Now, focus on a very specific day—Election Day.

Picture yourself standing in the polling booth, pen in hand, staring down at your ballot. What was going through your mind? Were you poring over every detail of the candidates’ manifestos, weighing up housing policies, tax reforms, and climate pledges with scholarly precision? Let’s be honest—you probably weren’t.

For most of us, Election Day wasn’t about hope or vision. It wasn’t a celebration of democratic ideals. It was grimly transactional. It was about determination—the sheer, unrelenting determination to move on from a government that had overstayed its welcome by a solid decade. By the time you walked into that booth, the finer points of any campaign had blurred into irrelevance. Like millions of others, you were thinking one thing: “We need change.”

And that, more than any manifesto or campaign slogan, is what 2024 has been about. Change. Not nuanced reform, not well-crafted vision, but a primal, collective yearning to throw the old lot out and try something—anything—different.

But here’s the real question: what does change actually mean? Does it guarantee something better, or is it just a roll of the dice? If the last twelve months have shown us anything, it’s that change isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s just chaotic. And in a year like this, where the world has seemed hell-bent on shaking every political institution to its core, that chaos has been impossible to ignore.

A Global Wave of Change

The demand for change isn’t just a UK phenomenon—it’s gone global. Across continents and political systems, voters have turned their backs on incumbents, elevated opposition movements, and leaned into populist rhetoric. The political landscape is shifting dramatically, and the results have been as varied as they are unsettling. Let’s take a moment to survey the fallout:

In South Africa, the ANC—a party that once appeared so entrenched it might as well have been chiselled into granite—has been forced into a coalition government for the first time in its post-apartheid history. Decades of corruption scandals, inefficiency, and rolling blackouts finally caught up with them, leaving their grip on power perilously weakened.

In the UK, the Conservatives weren’t just beaten; they were obliterated in what can only be described as a (very long overdue) political reckoning. After fourteen long years in power, their majority was reduced to ashes as Labour swept in with a resounding mandate to rebuild. The Tories’ catastrophic leadership choices, endless scandals, and economic mismanagement finally tipped voters over the edge.

France tells yet another story of discontent. Right-wing populist movements have gained worrying ground, threatening to upend the country’s political establishment. The far-right isn’t just knocking at the door anymore; they’re halfway into the sitting room, reaping the benefits of widespread frustration over economic stagnation and social upheaval.

And then there’s the United States. In a jaw-dropping twist that feels more like the opening act of a dystopian novel, Donald Trump has returned to the Oval Office for a second, non-consecutive term. His campaign capitalised on disillusionment with the Democrats, weaponised cultural divisions, and leveraged populist grievances to secure a narrow but seismic victory.

What’s the common thread running through these upheavals? Change. Not necessarily constructive change or well-thought-out solutions—just something different.

But while dissatisfaction has toppled governments worldwide, how that frustration is expressed depends on the system voters are navigating.

But why are we seeing this relentless thirst for change?

Because when the world is gripped by chaos—pandemics, financial crises, geopolitical tensions—voters gravitate toward anyone who promises to disrupt the status quo. The craving for change becomes less about policy and more about hope, desperation, or even revenge against those who failed to protect them during turbulent times.

This isn’t a measured call for reform; it’s an instinctive reaction to years of instability. It’s the political equivalent of flipping the table and hoping whatever lands next is better than the mess you’re currently staring at. But as we’ve seen in these examples, change for the sake of change doesn’t always work out—and it so often creates entirely new problems to grapple with.

What’s Sticking to the Incumbents

Now, let’s dig into what I would consider the “stickiness” of bad times, shall we?

COVID wasn’t just a health crisis; it was a merciless litmus test for leadership (or, in the UK’s case, the stark, spectacular absence of it). It exposed who could navigate a crisis with even a modicum of competence and who couldn’t strategise their way out of a brown paper bag. It showed us which leaders could steady the ship and who was more inclined to set it adrift while navel gazing themselves into oblivion.

The pandemic’s aftermath has left scars that stick like glue to whoever happened to be in charge when the world fell apart. Lockdown confusion? Stuck. A stumbling economic recovery? Stuck. Vaccine distribution mishaps? Superglued. Voters don’t have the bandwidth to wade through bureaucratic nuance or weigh the complexities of global supply chain collapses. What they do remember is who was at the helm when the iceberg hit.

In the UK, this meant the Conservatives were left (deservedly) carrying a truly rotten bag of potatoes. Boris Johnson’s government managed to turn incompetence into performance art with Partygate—a scandal so absurd it involved wine, cheese and a sneaky birthday cake while the rest of us were saying goodbye to loved ones over Zoom. His reported comment about letting “bodies pile high” didn’t help matters, nor did the endless parade of leadership failures under his tenure. And just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, along came Liz Truss, whose kamikaze mini-budget sent the economy into a nosedive so dramatic it made 49 days feel like a year. Add in 13 years of austerity, an NHS on life support, and a litany of broken promises, and you’ve got a toxic cocktail voters couldn’t wait to shove off the table.

In the United States, Joe Biden was saddled with a different set of burdens. Inflation soared, and while much of it was driven by global factors—supply chain chaos, the lingering effects of COVID, and the war in Ukraine—Biden’s name is the one voters pin to higher grocery bills and empty shelves. For an electorate already frazzled by years of divisive rhetoric and culture wars, the malaise of "more of the same" stuck very firmly to the White House.

The lesson here? When things go wrong, the public doesn’t care whether the problems are systemic, inherited, or the result of a global pandemic. The incumbent gets the blame, full stop. And when voters have been marinating in frustration for years, that blame turns into a desperate craving for change—even if that change means rolling the dice on someone (or something) worse.

Change, by Design: The UK vs the US

Now, while change may have been the common denominator across 2024’s elections, how that change manifested was shaped by the systems through which people voted. The UK and the US offer a particularly striking contrast here. One has a veritable kaleidoscope of parties vying for attention, while the other has a strict, binary choice. This distinction shaped not only the outcomes but also the character of the change itself.

In the US, voters faced a red pill or blue pill decision: Republican or Democrat. There’s no third-party surge to speak of, no plausible alternative emerging from the fringes. So when voters looked at their choices and decided they wanted something different, “different” was either sticking with the Democrats or swinging back to the Republicans. Cue Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office, not necessarily because the majority of Americans share his worldview, but because they wanted change within the limited constraints of the options before them.

The UK, meanwhile, had its buffet of choices. Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Green, Reform, and a smattering of independents all jostled for attention. This multiplicity of options allowed voters to express their desire for change in more nuanced ways. Yes, we ended up with a Labour landslide—an outcome that, under our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, often exaggerates the winning party’s dominance—but the path to that victory was paved by a wider array of voices.

If the UK operated under proportional representation (PR), as many quite rightly argue it should, the result would have been far more fragmented and diverse. Labour would still have won, but Parliament would have reflected the broader spectrum of political sentiment in the country. We’d see more Greens, more Lib Dems, and, yes, a few more populist MPs from Reform. But crucially, those populist voices wouldn’t have held the keys to the kingdom. Instead, we’d likely have seen a progressive coalition form—a government that, by its very nature, would have to build consensus and work collaboratively.

Compare that to the US, where coalition politics is a foreign concept. The binary structure of their system funnels all grievances, aspirations, and frustrations into just two parties, forcing voters to pick the least objectionable option rather than the one that truly represents their views. Trump’s victory doesn’t signify that the whole of the US has taken a sharp turn toward the far-right; it signifies that voters, constrained by their system, chose the only change on offer.

This distinction matters because it tells us something critical about the nature of democracy. The UK’s multitude of choices, even under the distorting lens of FPTP, allowed for a more representative expression of the electorate’s mood. The US, by contrast, was forced into a stark binary: same or different. Blue or Red. And when people are desperate for different, they’ll take it—even if it’s wrapped in the orange hue of a twice-impeached populist.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: the structures of our systems shape the kind of change we can achieve. The UK, for all its flaws, shows that plurality has its merits. The US, meanwhile, demonstrates the dangers of a system that reduces complex political landscapes into binary choices. Neither system is perfect, but only one gave its voters the tools to demand not just change, but a change that reflects the diversity of their aspirations.

Now, back to that Ballot

I’ll come back to my original question - What were you thinking on Election Day?

Likely the same thing millions were thinking across the globe: “We need something different.” Whether it was shaking off a corrupt government, ousting a party that had overstayed its welcome, or simply choosing the lesser of two evils, one thing was clear—people craved change.

The challenge now, for the new government here in the UK and for leaders worldwide, isn’t just to deliver change for the sake of it—it’s to ensure that change is meaningful, tangible, and doesn’t leave us worse off than before. If they fail, the next election won’t be about progress or hope; it’ll be another cry for help, another desperate lurch toward whatever’s on the other side of the pendulum swing. And with every violent swing of that pendulum, the mechanism that holds it together—the system itself—becomes more likely to shatter.

We’re already seeing the cracks: voter apathy, rising extremism, and the creeping sense that no matter who we choose, the outcomes are the same. If the new government wastes this moment, they’ll leave the door wide open for populists, opportunists, and conmen peddling false promises. Because when change becomes synonymous with chaos, people start reaching for anyone who claims to have the answers, no matter how absurd those answers might be.

So, let’s hope that in the rubble of 2024, we start building something better. Not just different—better. Something stronger, fairer, and genuinely forward-thinking. Because if we don’t, we’ll be right back here in five years, holding another ballot, staring at another list of choices, and hoping—desperately—that this time, we get it right.