News from the New Party

Beyond apathy

If you sit down of an evening and discuss the government and its doings, if you wrangle over what Gordon Brown has done and left undone, you are rare indeed. Only 41% say they have discussed politics or political news with friends or family in the past two or three years. Two or three years! Good grief, what do they talk about, political obsessives will wonder?

Now only a bare majority - a mere 53% - declare themselves certain to vote, in this worst ever Hansard survey. The report's preface notes a "sobering and consistent finding" of how few people are ever politically active: most of those only sign a petition. Only 4% have made any political donation. With "a high level of political ignorance about constitutional arrangements", 55% say they know nothing much about politics. Most are indifferent about both a bill of rights and a written constitution...

Despite citizenship classes, only 23% of 18-24 year-olds say they'll vote. Newspaper reading is falling, BBC news and current affairs struggle for audiences. People are good at grumbling about everything, yet they won't lift a finger to change anything.

But then pause to reflect. Take a deep breath, calm down. Look back on the days when nearly everyone voted. Was it out of some heightened sense of civic duty, as the government suggests? Jack Straw, publishing his draft Constitutional Renewal Bill this week, says he intends to consult "on how we might instil in citizens a greater sense that voting is an important civic duty, as part of a wider citizenship agenda - though we have no intention of criminalising those who do not vote". Personally, I doubt that any amount of "instilling civic duty", flag-flying or exhortation to Britishness will make any difference. What makes people vote is having something worth voting for - and something to vote against. Straw is ignoring not an elephant, but a herd of rhinoceroses in the cabinet room. When people shut the door on canvassers saying, "You're all the same", they're not wrong in these strange political times. Give them clear choices and they'll come out and choose, otherwise they will sit at home and sulk, rightly sensing politics is a Westminster stitch-up with the parties fighting over the same shrinking piece of all-things-to-all-people centre ground.

Those most likely to vote are the old - 78% of the over-65s. Is that because they are dutiful citizens? No, it is because they have deeper affiliations stretching back to the days when parties did stand for identifiably distinct values. Above all, parties stood for different class and economic interests. Them-and-us was spelled out loud and clear: whose side are you on, who stands up for people like us?

There is no united British civic interest, except in matters of national security.

On doorsteps, you find less apathy than directionless general indignation. One thing is painfully clear from the Hansard Audit - the people are not clamouring for constitutional reform. Yet that is part of what is needed to tempt more to the polls. Labour is on the move - too little, too slow, but better late than never - with as yet tentative plans to give voters a little more choice. An alternative vote (AV), ranking candidates in 1,2,3 order, allows for a second preference to be redistributed from the lowest-scoring candidate's share until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote. It's hardly revolutionary, but it makes it worthwhile to vote for a smaller party as first choice, with a second-choice backstop to keep out whichever party you hate most: Greens and others can register their true support. It is such a small change it needs no referendum and should be done right now for the next election.