M-TH: British Elections

[George Pennefather]

            Apathy wins the day

            Derek Brown looks at how the low turnout affects the results

            Friday May 5, 2000

            The winners are crowing over their triumph, and the losers are
            scornfully dismissing any suggestion of defeat. It was ever thus in
            electoral politics where the outcome, however cut and dried, tends
            to lie in the eye of the beholder.
            To Labour, the loss of more than 500 council seats is "containable".
            For the Tories, the loss of the Romsey byelection to the Liberal
            Democrats is less important than Labour's loss of its deposit.
            But the bombast and special pleading cannot conceal the most
            significant figure to emerge from Thursday's welter of polling: two
            thirds of the electorate couldn't be bothered to take part.
            Even in the London mayoral election, the most publicised contest in
            recent political history, the turnout was a dismal 35%. Elsewhere in
            England, it averaged rather less. In one district, electors were so
            indifferent that only 14% cast their votes.
            The abysmal turnout badly undermines the efforts of psephologists to
            extrapolate the likely outcome of the next general election. The
            council results are also skewed by the fact that Labour was
            defending a swathe of seats captured in 1996, when Conservative
            fortunes were at their lowest ebb.
            In that context, the Labour loss of 546 seats and the Tory gain of
            542 merely returns the two big parties to a more natural balance in
            their respective heartlands. As a pointer to national voting
            intentions, the swing is no more significant than the LibDem's
            ostensible triumph in capturing 28% of the popular vote - just two
            percentage points behind Labour.
            In a deeper sense, though, the turnout must be deeply disappointing
            to all the parties, and especially to the government. Since 1997 it
            has made great play of its intention to revive popular participation
            in politics, through devolution and other constitutional reforms.
            For the latest elections, the normally rigid polling conventions
            were relaxed, and local authorities were allowed to experiment with
            new procedures. They included electronic counting - which went
            embarrassingly wrong in the London mayoral poll - mobile polling
            booths, weekend and week-long voting.
            None of the innovations had much of an impact. English voters, it
            seems, neither approve nor disapprove of their local councils.
            Londoners are not convinced that it matters whose bottom is on the
            new mayoral chair. For all the huffing and puffing of the political
            leaders, elections are still decided not so much by the popular
            will, as by the lack of it.









       Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000


Warm regards
George Pennefather

Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/

Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community by
simply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]






     --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---