As the annual political party conference season begins, falling party memberships, falling voter turnout and diminishing respect for those in public life are all factors signalling a widening gulf between elected politicians and the people they are meant to represent.
In recent decades voter turnout at general elections had been gradually falling, dropping from 83.9 % in 1950 to 77.7% in 1992 and following which there was a marked drop of over six percentage points to 71.4% in 1997, followed by another larger drop of eleven percentage points to 59.4% in 2001. In the two general elections since then the turnout has appeared to recover somewhat to 61.4% in 2005 and 65.1% in 2010, but this has been largely the result of the campaign to encourage wider postal voting and other initiatives such as ‘Operation Black Vote’ designed to increase electoral participation by ethnic minority voters.
The Turnout at UK Parliamentary Elections [1]:
The result of low voter turnouts has been to create a situation in which the legitimacy of government is increasingly called into question, as individual candidates and whole governments are now elected with the active support of only a minority of electors.
For example, in 1997, the voter turnout was 71.4% and New Labour were elected with just 43.2% of the vote. This means that the percentage of the total electorate that voted for Tony Blair’s first Labour government was just (71.4 x 43.2 /100 =) 30.9%.
Less than one in three of the electorate actually voted Labour, yet Tony Blair and his Labour government were elected with a majority in the House of Commons of 179!
A similar situation existed in 2001, when Labour won 40.7% of the vote on a voter turnout of just 59.4% and this means that Blair’s second Labour administration, which enjoyed a Commons majority of 167, was elected with the support just (59.4 x 40.7 /100 =) 24.2% of the electorate!
Worse still, was the situation in 2005, when Tony Blair was re-elected to the third term in office, by just 35.2% of a 61.4% turnout, which means that third Labour administration, with a majority of 66 MPs in the House of Commons, had the support of just (61.4 x 35.2 / 100 =) 21.61% of the electorate!
When David Cameron’s Conservative administration took office in 2010, despite winning 36.1% of the vote on a turnout of 65.1%, i.e. having the support of a greater percentage of the electorate than Labour in 2005, (65.1 x 36.1 =) 23.5%, the Conservatives did not have a Commons majority and were only able to form a government through coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
Furthermore, it has now become normal for two out of every three MPs to lack the support of a majority of local voters, and an increasing number now win their seats with only around 40 per cent of the vote. The ‘First Past The Post’ voting system used in our General Elections, means that two thirds of MPs, 433 of those elected in 2010, did not have the support of a majority of the voters in their constituencies [2].
With just over 1% of the population, political party membership in the UK is a distinctly minority pursuit. Furthermore, with more than 1 million members each, there are more members of the Caravan Club, or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, than of all Britain’s political parties put together.
Again, these are astounding statistics and they are the result of a dramatic decline in recent decades in the numbers of people identifying with political parties sufficiently to want to be members and give them active support.
Declining Political Party Membership [3][4]:
There have been in recent decades, a catalogue of political scandals, which have served to rock public confidence in our government and in our politicians and which have exposed the current class of professional career politicians as venal and corruptible and unworthy of our trust.
Such scandals included; the cash-for-questions affair in1994; the £1m donation to the Labour Party made by Bernie Ecclestone in 1997, which created a political scandal when the incoming Labour government changed its policy to allow Formula One to continue being sponsored by tobacco manufacturers; The cash for honours scandal on 2006; and the long running Parliamentary Expenses scandal of recent years [5].
A consequence of all these scandals is that many people, and young people especially who might normally be expected to be amongst the most ideological of voters, have become disillusioned regarding the honesty and integrity of elected politicians and this, coupled with the failure of politicians to keep their electoral pledges has caused the public to increasingly reject the idea of political party membership and to abstain from voting altogether.
The Pattern of Non-Voting at Parliamentary Elections [6]:
Clearly, in almost all age groups there has been a marked decline in the numbers voting, and this tendency is particularly marked amongst the young with 55% of people aged 18 to 24 claiming to have abstained from voting during the 2005 General Election.
Politicians have tended on occasions to dismiss the trends highlighted above as evidence of a general apathy on the part of electors, an apathy that is widespread and not specific to, nor reflective of a deteriorating relationship with government. However, the following table does not support such an assertion.
Trends in Political Interest, 1986–2003 [7]:
This table demonstrates that the public interest in politics has remained fairly constant throughout the period from 1986 to 2003 and therefore the lack of interest in political party membership and the increasing tendency to abstain from voting clearly demonstrates, not apathy over political issues, but voter disillusionment with the conduct of elected politicians and with the electoral process altogether.
Increasingly politicians seek to excuse their lack of effectiveness by claiming that trends are ‘global’ or ‘international’ and that they are therefore unable to effect change without the support of their counterparts in other countries.
Increasingly, politicians seek to excuse their lack of action and belittle their critics by claiming that issues are more complex than the man in the street can appreciate, and by dismissing seemingly obvious and in many cases electorally popular solutions as ‘crudely simplistic’ and ‘unlikely to succeed’, even though no attempt has been made to test them.
However, politicians are increasingly seen as self-serving, venal and corrupt; accepting ‘cash for questions’, ‘cash for honours’ and ‘cash for influence’; using their elected positions to line their pockets and as a base from which to launch subsequent and lucrative careers as lobbyists on behalf of vested interest groups when their term in office runs out.
Elected politicians of all three of the main political parties increasingly appear at odds with the electorate over issues of great concern; supporting continued mass immigration into Britain when the public are strongly in favour of strict immigration controls; supporting membership of the European Union and acquiescing to increasing demands from the EU, when the majority of the public want the influence of the EU to be curtailed; refusing to take a hard line on crime when the public are crying out for such an approach; and allowing British industry to go to the wall or be exported abroad, when the public want our industries and the jobs they provide to be protected from unfair overseas competition.
Regarding all these issues and many more, elected politicians are increasingly seen as contemptuous of public opinion and what is worse, they are seen to be acting as a cartel, thereby denying the public any real electoral choice. With regard to all of the issues identified above, Labour, the Conservatives and the LibDems have virtually identical policies and therefore, whichever of these parties the electrate votes for, government policy remains the same.
Furthemore, when one realises that successive governments have been formed with the active support of less that 1 in 4 of the electorate, it is unacceptable and it undermines the moral legitimacy of our democratic system that they govern with such disregard for the wishes of the majority of the British people.
Such a state of affairs increasingly poses a threat to democracy as finding themselves living in a society that does not reflect their wishes, and under an apparent tyranny which does not protect or promote their interests, disaffected and alienated sections of the public already exhibit an increased readiness to challenge the legitimacy of government policy and a reduced willingness to sacrifice in the wider interests of our society.
Our society is therefore becoming more self-centred and less cohesive and there is a growing propensity among less responsible sections of the public to indulge in violent and destructive protests and demonstrations such as were seen during the riots that took place during the summer of 2011.
There are now legitimate concerns among large sections of the public that if the democratic system in this country remains unresponsive to public opinion, and if government continue to react feebly in the face of those who take the law into their own hands, this could well set in motion a train of events that will lead to an increasingly violent and turbulent political future in which electoral politics will play a diminishing role.
Never before has there been a more pressing need for all people of goodwill to organise with a view to effecting a root and branch reform of our political system, and so that elected politicians will once again reflect the majority views of the electorate and implement policies that put the interests of the British people first.
[1] Source: https://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
[2] Source: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/minority-mandates/
[3] Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12934148
[5] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_scandals_in_the_United_Kingdom
[7] Source: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/publications/unit-publications/112.pdf
Stephen Johnson
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Political decline need not be terminal, but to achieve political rebirth much has to change – party funding, the parties themselves, the voting system and the relationship between politicians, the media and the public all has to change.
Take the voting system. To reflect the real balance of party support we should have a PR system. Under FPTP many people feel their vote is wasted. What is the point of voting if it won’t make a difference?
The voting system that requires the least administrative change to the FPTP system – that retains the existing single member constituencies and the simple voting and simple quick counting and where every vote makes a difference – is Direct Party and Representative Voting.
Steve
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To paraphrase the famous Ghandi remark “What do I think of British democracy, it would be a good start”.