The national media has been awash with analysis of victories for Labour and heavy defeats for the coalition parties in last week’s local elections. But the big winner from 3^rd May was apathy. What happened to giving back power to the people? Why didn’t the growing anger of British citizens against the Government translate into long queues at the polling stations? And why have city mayors been overwhelmingly rejected?

The average voter turnout on Thursday was only 33% – the lowest since 2000 – with some council Wards recording figures below ten per cent. At a time of localism and Big Society, along with growing anger over NHS reforms, taxation and spending cuts, the political appetite for political participation should surely be high? But it isn’t. This could be due to the age-old feeling that “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, nothing ever changes!” Or, “Politics doesn’t affect me so what’s the point?!” Or, it could be worse; it could be that voters are so disillusioned with the current state of British politics that they can’t physically bring themselves to walk to the polling station. A recent survey from the Hansard Society suggests that this is the case, concluding that people are ‘disillusioned, disgruntled and disengaged’. It could be a vote against the political system as a whole.

There is no doubt that national politics is in turmoil, but these elections were local and there in lies part of the problem. All of the media analysis and attention has focused on the “national picture” and not enough about the local picture. The disengagement in national politics, as discussed in the previous paragraph, comes, in part, from the inability of national politicians to relate to citizens. Tim Farron, the Lib Dem party president came out early on Friday morning apologising to former Lib Dem councillors who were ousted from their seats, blaming their defeats on the actions of the national party. But should local councillors and councils be doing more to distance themselves from Westminster and convince their electorate of the differences between Whitehall and County Hall. Many of those 33% who turned up to the polling stations on Thursday probably didn’t know who their local candidates were – and this is due, in part, to local candidates not making themselves visible to the electorate and to councils not engaging their communities sufficiently.

More needs to be done to get people motivated to vote and more needs to be done to bring campaigns back to issues that mean something to communities and not the national press. Londoners were the biggest losers on campaign issues. I am very interested in politics and have recently moved to London so I was excited at the prospect of being part of the London mayoral election but, in my opinion, the way the campaign quickly descended into a Boris v Ken row on taxes and earnings was a disgrace. The ITV mayoral debate opitomised the campaign: when summing up what he would do for London, Ken Livingston used his few minutes to once again attack his opponent rather than set out his
own agenda. This is not good enough and the voters deserve better.

With a turnout rate at the lowest level since 2000 it is time to discuss how we can galvanise the British electorate to come out and vote in the sorts of numbers that we saw from our neighbours across the Channel. There is of course a cultural difference, the French are far more political than Brits, and it is not fair to put the low turnout down to the politicians exclusively. More needs to be done to educate people – young and old – about the merits of having your say and being able to vote in local, national, and European elections. And once elected, councillors and MPs and mayors need to demonstrate why voting is important. After all, being elected by less than 10% of your local electorate – as recorded in some wards last week – is not a strong and clear mandate.

But can voting be made easier? Can new technologies be used such as SMS voting be used to make it more convenient for today’s ‘time-poor’ citizens? Online voting is also an option. Whilst there are issues with security and validity of online and SMS voting, it might go some way to getting more people to vote and to also avoid some of the paper-counting fiascos witnessed at the weekend (G2G Founder Alex George has more on this).

So, there is a need to invigorate the British people in to wanting to exercise their democratic right to vote. This needs to come from both top-down engagement and education with a dash of bottom-up desire. Compulsory voting would be one option but I don’t see this as a solution. When voters go to the polls they should want to be there, they should want to exercise their rights, and the politicians should give them a reason to
go, for good or for bad.

Sam Cranston – Partner & Events Director, Generation 2 Generation