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Rt. Hon. John Redwood's Telegraph Article |
Voter interest in elections has declined sharply this century. In the 2005 General Election twice as many people failed to vote as voted for the winning party. It is now thought normal for two thirds of all voters to abstain at local elections.
The 2001 and 2005 General Elections were more like a series of by-elections held on the same day. Far from a simple uniform swing from Labour to Conservatives, there were dramatically different swings seat by seat. Swings reached as high as an astonishing 49%! The stars were the minor party candidates and independents who seemingly against all the laws of General Election arithmetic, unseated the main parties. The largest parties in the UK are advised by people who remain wedded to a very old notion of how politics works, rooted in the certainties of the 1950s and 1960s. They see elections in terms of a uniform swing between the two major parties. There are, they say, sufficient “floating voters” who have “centrist” political views. The art of politics is for the Labour party to suppress the left , or for the Conservatives the right, to appeal to this group of consensual party hoppers who decide the fate of the nation. Today this approach is such a huge obstacle between the party leaderships and the electorates. The parties, rather like first world war generals, keep throwing more money at polling and focus groups to reveal the words the elusive few million in the middle use, in the hope they can then break through with the spin machine. They first try to discover the fears and prejudices, then hone a message which panders to them. People distrust political parties, because they see that the pollsters and ad men are in charge. How do we know what the party truly believes, they ask, if all have to mouth the same inane soundbite served up by the advisers? How can we trap the more honest or the less wary, ask the media, so we can reveal that many of the senior people in the party do not really believe in the bland message that the centre is pumping out? In my new book I chart the growing gap between public concern about big political issues, and the main parties. The public want people and parties who tell them the truth as they see it. They have a stomach for some lively disagreements. They understand that no major party can be full of clones of the leadership all thinking the same . They want understanding, people who give their fears and views voice. They do not want extremists, but they do want some attitude in their politicians, a flash of daring, a willingness to move the argument on, the ability to inform the public debate rather than a consistent attempt to smother it. Divided parties regularly govern. Thatcher’s government was split between wets and dries. Blair’s has been a continuous civil war between Blairites and Brownies. It’s a nonsense to say that only a completely united party of yes people can now win an election. Modern politics is a series of campaigns. Often the most effective operators are outside the main parties. The green agenda was pioneered by pressure groups. The Churches and the Fair Trade movement offered leadership on world poverty and hunger. Neighbours lead local campaigns, organising meetings, lobbying the officials who have power. Modern government has become a hollowed out system of continuous communication. Many Ministers seem to think their day job is to satisfy the media, or to manage it. The Prime Minister tells us that government is so much more difficult today because we live in a world of 7 by 24 media. Has it never occurred to him that the job of government is to govern? They should concentrate on running public services in their control, and on legislating when necessary. It is not their job to fix the front page of a daily newspaper, and silly to think they can turn the press into propaganda poodles. The parties feel they have to raise ever more fanciful sums of money to stay in the spin game. Many of the more interesting political stories in recent years have been attempts to expose the silver web of donors and parties. Were the rules broken? Why did he give the money? Did policy change after the gift? Was the loan really a loan? The public feels there is something sleazy about all this. It brings them to doubt the main parties even more than their bland messages. So what should be done? If we want to cleanse the parties we should first control the amount of money they can raise and spend. Let’s put a cap of £50,000 on a single donor’s contribution in any year. Let’s put a much lower cap than £15 million on the amount a party can spend in a General Election. Stronger controls would remove much of the fear of sleaze from fund raising. It would also mean that between elections the main parties had to rely on the general polls that newspapers and others published. The parties could rediscover that the best focus groups are the ones attentive politicians carry out on doorsteps. If parties want to gauge a mood on something more accurately, there is always the survey carried about by voluntary workers or through modern communications technology. The main parties also need to understand that there is no magic group of people huddled in the centre of politics desperately looking to see which party has best suppressed its outriders. The mixture of views amongst modern abstainers means they are not naturally going to vote for any of the three main parties. Many have stayed at home in frustration. Others have voted Respect because they think the war against Iraq was such a mistake. Some have voted UKIP because they want out of the EU, some have chosen BNP because they want less immigration. Some have elected Independent MPs in seats that were Labour, because they so disapprove of the government’s public service record. To win a party has to construct a coalition of the willing out of these cross currents of opinion. You do it by ditching the army of pollsters and spinners, taking to the streets, and offering some leadership on the big problems of the day. You may need greens and motorists, small business people and public sector professionals, civil liberty campaigners and believers in the traditional family, tax cutters and believers in first class schools and hospitals in an effective Conservative coalition. The art is to show you can do something for all these groups, without misleading or letting them down. People would respond well to an agenda which promises to rebuild our democracy. It would mean fewer layers of government – certainly no regional government in England – and fewer politicians and bureaucrats. It means clearer responsibilities, with elected officials taking and defending the decisions. It means a Parliament which meets often enough and long enough to hold the government to account. It means political parties working in local communities rather than preaching from the centre. It means slimming or removing quangos, the heartlands of unaccountable power. It means tearing up some of the rule books, and letting people be freer. Many are fed up with living in a snooper society, where the government is only efficient at sending the bill. As the Conference season gets underway, let's see party leaders welcome lively debate about the problems of the nation, seeing in it democratic strength, not the weakness of disunity. John Redwood: I want to make a difference – but I don’t like politics is published next week by Politico’s in paperback |
