I don’t like local elections. They remind me of the failures of our democracy. In the last decade, politicians have prophesied constantly about civil renewal, localism and ‘people power’. Yet here we are again, seemingly no further on, with voters as disillusioned and disengaged as ever.
In the 2009 local elections, 17.5 million people had the right to cast a vote. Just 6.9 million bothered to do so. And some polling experts are predicting that today’s turnout could be even worse, resulting in the lowest in twenty years.
But it’s not surprising that voters are switched off when local elections are habitually hijacked by mainstream party politics and national battles.
Politicians are forever fretting about voter apathy. Tony Blair hoped his ‘Third Way’ politics, with its focus on decentralization and community, would engage voters. David Cameron still hopes his ‘Big Society’ will.
Local authorities have no say over welfare benefits or education policy; they have no control over taxation or the government’s ‘austerity measures’. But still the mainstream political parties act as though they do, and treat local elections – and the people who can vote in them – as test beds for their national campaigns.
Here’s what Ed Miliband said on Wednesday as he campaigned in the East Midlands: “The choice is between a One Nation Labour party that knows we rebuild Britain by standing up for the many. And a Conservative-led Government that only stands up for the few. By electing Labour councillors, people will be electing representatives who stand up for them not just a few people at the top.”
And this is David Cameron on ITV’s Daybreak: “Most people face a choice either between the Conservatives running their local council or Labour running their local council, and if Labour get in, as we’ve heard from Miliband over recent days, they believe in more spending, more borrowing, more of the things that got us into this mess in the first place. And that’s the same in the town hall as it is in government.”
But local elections aren’t about party leaders, or even about political parties. They’re about local democracy – about giving people the chance to look at their own communities, and assess what their councillors are doing for them. Instead, politicians have reduced them to a straw poll on the national picture. No wonder people don’t vote.
I liked Blair’s focus on civil renewal; on a thriving citizen culture that gives people the ability and the desire to get involved. I like the ideas behind Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, of cooperation and of giving public sector workers more say in their local community.
But none of these ideas will work so long as national politicians continue to traduce local democracy. It’s time to give local elections back.
This piece first appeared at http://www.speakerschair.com on 2nd May 2013
Kath Raymond Hinton 