Shortly after Caroline Flack announced Amber Gill as the nation’s sweetheart and Greg O’Shea as Love Island‘s luckiest late-stage entry – just as Maura Higgins screeched “luck of the Irish!” over the bouncy Love Island credits, her final words of the series she was the real hero of – I turned to a friend and said in earnest: “You know, this goes some way to restore my faith in the democratic process.”
I turned 18 in 2012. Since then, I have suffered the emotional whiplash of 2014’s Scottish independence referendum; what seems in retrospect like fortnightly general elections, each leading us further and further down the darkest timeline, (other than that 2017 exit poll. That was fun, wasn’t it?); a Brexit referendum that sent hate crime soaring and put those not already buffered from austerity’s impact even more at risk; and, in the extended display of incompetence in its aftermath, a European Parliament election won by Nigel Farage.
And those are just the votes most of us got to take part in.
I will say this again. Do not divide the vote. Amber and Greg have more chance of winning. People only really like Ovie, but Amber and Greg as individuals are well liked. Vote for them, don't split the vote and let Tommy and Molly win #LoveIsland
— Azalea Marie (@marie_azalea) July 28, 2019
By this point it’s tough not to approach voting as an act of collective masochism. I’ve never really known what it is to vote for someone and see them come out on top (Will Young’s Pop Idol triumph aside). Voters further to the right than I have tasted what they interpret as victory time and time again, and seem to feel vindicated by their electoral domination. What must that be like, I wonder? The left is busy in-fighting, all split votes and ideological battles. Voting and pessimism, for many of us, now go hand in hand.
But like a beacon of hope, Love Island has made it all seem possible again. Despite all those abs and neon bikinis, the plastic wine flutes and inexplicable Craig David appearances, could democracy have come out on top as the real winner?