I want to pick up on a theme Lord Norton has raised once or twice, about the perceived problem of political disengagement, especially amomg the young. You know, the poor voting record in elections, the small numbers who join political parties and so on. I would like to suggest that it is a symptom of a deep-seated feeling that everything in the world is basically safe and that life will more or less carry on as usual whatever party is in power. There is so little perceived difference between the major political parties by most people that there doesn’t seem much point in voting. This could be seen as the inevitable outcome of a remarkably stable economy, the absence of war for two generations and the two main parties moving much more closely into a consensus on many public policies. Hey this might be a good thing? No-one wants to be bothered to vote? Let’s celebrate…..
Of course the world won’t stay like this. Even the most stable democracy can be overturned by a seductive philosophy. And war will probably come again. Then young people will want to exercise their views again.
I can see why you would want to float ‘never had it so good hypothesis’ but don’t take it too seriously. People generally see politicians small-minded, self-serving wasters. That is not the way I see it but it is the way younger people see the political process and it is nothing to be complacent about.
We face some horrendous challenges and our politicians seem entirely inadequate for the task, with no vision, or even adequate grasp of the problem.
I am sorry–I couldn’t let this one go past.
I am not sure I agree that people are not interested in politics because ‘life is good’ – it is interesting that many of the routes by which people found their way into politics, unions, rotary clubs etc no longer have the same position in society.
I am intrigued by the argument that says young people are disengaged from politics rather than politicians are disengaging young people though…
My home and business is in the constituency of the previous PM. During Mr Blair’s tenure, very few of the work experience students I worked with were able to name either their MP or identify he was their PM. I could see no obvious correlation with their general background or standard of education, though the outliers could be considered as products of their upbringing.
Though I don’t have more than a handful of employees at any one time, not one has ever voted, and they have all been under the age of 30 (not by design, I can assure you). The reason they give is that they can’t be bothered. I don’t know if the underlying reason is that they don’t see the point in such a safe seat but I suspect it is more to do with their lack of knowledge of politics and the process of voting.
But ask them about Health and Safety and they are mustard. The last student, on a BTech placement, filling in the ‘What do you hope to learn from your placement’ box, wrote ‘I hope to learn about health and safety’. No more, no less.
Based on the above, I’ll have a punt that politics isn’t high on the list of the average education syllabus but, hell, they feel safe so that’s OK.
I’m 20, about 5 or 6 years ago I loved politics – I was very interested in in following debates and trying to understand what was going on.
Now, however, despite reading a few political blogs, keeping up with interesting developments and following politics more than my family, I have no real impetus to bother with it.
> I’m fed up with the vapid rhetoric, trying to appeal to far too many different people that the words are devoid of meaning.
> I can’t stand the dick-measuring contest that is PMQs.
> I see politicians make populist cave-ins on economic matters, or worse espouse the ideas themselves.
> I hate it when politicians display a lack of basic scientific knowledge (such as promoting Quackery (aka Alternative Med.)).
> I hate that most politicians went to public schools, while I had a school where the average class-size was 30 students, the whole thing is an old-boys-club.
> A reactionary press that seems to drive most of legislation on civil liberties and crime.
> Goverments ignoring research (on anything; computer games, drugs crime prevention etc., but the Supermax prisons come to mind foremost) and instead doing what will make them look ‘tough’.
> Making promises to protect us from our nightmares (the terrorists).
> Lastly, behaving like they are managers of a company, rather than elected officials within a Goverment.
Right, I realise that was a bit long and not all of it is entirely relevant to voter disengagement/apathy, but then again maybe that is the wrong word to discribe what is going on – apathy seems to imply that everything is going OK, and that people are not voting because they have everything they need. And I think that it is far too disingenuous, Baroness, to claim that voters are not engaged because you have given them “a remarkably stable economy”.
I feel the solution lies in a different area than the fault. If I want shop online, I have plenty of places to choose from; but I can’t choose to pay my taxes/get government infomation/vote/speak to my MP through the websites of another government, I only have one ‘choice’ and if its not good enough, or non-existant I’m not likely to be very impressed when supermarkets can deliver me better service than my politicians.
I think it’s a mix of everything mentioned here. Little/no difference between politicians, stable society so little reason to vote, perception that politics is uncool, dis-interest in the wider world, etc. I’ve seen it all.
University in particular was amazing to me because so few other students even bothered to read the news, let alone have an opinion on it. But then again why should they? It’s mostly depressing and the average student can have no impact on the issues of the day. Better to spend the time partying 🙂
I think devolving voting to the people (ie, having lots and lots of referendums) would go some way towards solving this. Most people, even young people, have at least one or two issues they feel passionately about. However they can’t have any impact on those issues through regular voting because it’s too low resolution, so people give up entirely. I know how Lord Norton feels about referendums, but what I’m suggesting is that everyone can vote on any issue their MP votes on – if they don’t vote then their vote falls back to the “default” established by their MP.
For instance, I know and care about technology issues but not about most other things (eg, childcare bills, agriculture, etc). I’d prefer it if my MP voted on those things on my behalf. But if the internet comes up in Parliament, I might want to express an opinion on that.
We have the technology to do this today, but haven’t even begun investigating it, because having indirect voting via MPs is the way it’s “always” worked.
As to the impression that all politicians are incompetent, well, I don’t have any ideas for that. To put it bluntly I sometimes think the same thing: I was telling people we were about to hit oil supply problems over 3 years ago but the government was furiously denying that there was going to be any issues. If some random guy reading websites can figure out what’s going to happen better than the civil service, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the rest of the governments operations!
Undoubtedly the subject of political disengagement is far too complex for a single blog post but well done for sparking more debate.
From the research I’ve read many young people don’t vote because they don’t see the relevance to them. They don’t feel it will make a difference and for the majority of us it won’t. Unless you live in a marginal seat your vote isn’t like to have a big effect on national politics.
The same isn’t necessarily true in local politics. Many many wards have margins of less than 100, but it is even more difficult to get voters to turn out for local elections. Why? Because it won’t make any difference.
Education is driven by national standards, planning refusals are overturned by unelected officials on a national basis, local councils are driven to meet a long list of national targets and their funding and status is dependent upon it.
Until power is returned to local govt local people will remain disengaged from local politics.
Baroness Murphy – You have certainly stirred up some very interesting responses ! Especially lady tizzy. I am less concerned about students having a particular interest in politics for the 3 years they are at college. A lot of political animals don’t read the paper if they are in a foreign country on a holiday. For many people university is a chance to experience life at first hand, rather than learning about it via the media.
What is more concerning is lady tizzy’s view that people up to 30 just aren’t curious about what is going on around them. My view is that some young people ARE interested in ‘politics’, but maybe not party politics – so many will support Greenpeace Or Amnesty Or NO2ID, for example.
Some developers recently wanted to work with the city council to build some offices and retail developments on a park in the city centre. It was surprising just how willing the young people were to take up the cudgels on an issue like that.
But the City Council had organised the ‘consultation exercise’ on a WEEKEND coinciding with the annual music festival – which tells you all you need to know about how seriously they value the views of the youth when it comes to making major decisions which affect people.
Maybe if we want to know why young people are so disenchanted, we should ‘look in the mirror’ and asking what, if anything, are we doing to make the political process something they may actually want to be involved with ? The fact is that the Government is not willing to allow a referendum on Lisbon, is trying to force ID cards through on a population that doesn’t want them, and generally lives up to the maxim that ‘If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it.’
So if young people want to change the world, one suspects that the last people they would turn to are politicians who, in many cases, are just feathering their nests and trying to preserve the status quo – in fact if it wasn’t for the Lords the problem would be much worse.
One suspects that David Davis wouldn’t agree that young people have no interest in politics, as many have headed up north to Yorkshire to help in his campaign to turn the tide on our Surveillance State culture and the current plans to make this country as illiberal as possible. Perhaps you could ask him for his views on this topic ??
Well I’m glad that got you all stirred up. Chris Dorman, I know lots of politicians are disappointingly unimpressive but also many that aren’t. If we don’t engage the very best students in the political process while they are at school, it’s unlikely to improve so we have to find someway to do it or it will remain a minority sport for the mediocre.
Ade, You’re on to something there.
Troika21—Wish I’d written some of that myself, but perhaps only when I am in a bad mood, there are other better sides to politics. However I don’t want you to think I identify myself with governments having given us a stable economy; governments make a contribution but global trends are as important. I wouldn’t claim such influence.
Many of you picked up the theme that engagement at local level in the things that really matter to young people–the environment, climate change, treating animals well, poverty overseas and injustice are matters that will engage them. Perhaps political parties need to expand the remit and enliven the organizations that aim to engage young people. But I am no expert here, I just feel it’s a pity when that so many students are totally disinterested.
I know that I can get a bit angry with politics and politicians these days, truly I think that everyone shares some blame, but I do feel that it is mostly one the politicians themselves.
The caustic buggering of the public discourse has been the most effective method that the public has become disengaged, PR merchants are the main problem I feel (and elements of the media), it is impossible to have a thoughtful and reasoned debate concerning politics: all the infomation I have to go on comes from soundbites, where no infomation is contained and they are mostly concerned with attacking the opposition.
I do feel that the idea of bringing politics back to a local focus would be a massive improvement – would make politics more accessible, understandable and manageable. But I’m not talking about the Politic-Kings in Parliament graciously giving ‘more powers’ to local authorities, I wish for the entire UK to be decentralised and each region becoming a city-state in its own right, with Parliament setting Foreign Policy and any crime laws (amongst other UK wide items) – kind of like a mini-EU. But thats another discussion I suppose.
A much better solution would be to reverse the problem within the politician-electorate communication divide by reworking the vehicle’s of communication. Lets have state financed symposium, with debates (good debates) between each party Leader and their prospective cabinet members, backed up with questions from *experts* real experts – not ‘the public’, the public are morons. I want professors (and such) who have spent their whole lives studying, say, economics, question the potential Chancellor about their Economic Plans. Seeing independent, competent people who know what they are talking about ask politicians important questions, and recieving knowledgeable replies ofcourse, would improve public trust.
Thats two big ideas, I’m sure we can think of more.
baronessmurphy: don’t get me wrong. I said ‘that is not the way I see it’; I was not passing comment on the politicians but on the way people tend to see them, and I don’t think it is anything to get complacent about, so I just rephrased your observations from a different angle.
of course there are unimpressive politicians just as there are unimpressive plumbers and brain surgeons and coal miners. However when you get a severe disconnect between politicians, plumbers, brain surgeons, coal miners and the people they are serving then trouble is not far round the corner. I really don’t think the “they’ve never had it so good” argument is a good one, and it is not as if we aren’t facing some severe challenges.
What Barack Obama is doing to engage people in the political process is something we should be looking at; it strikes me as pretty important for all of our futures.