Now that the elections nobody wanted are over everyone is picking over the bones. The general consensus is that the whole process was a shocking waste of time and money, as well as being vastly undemocratic, though a few of the political eliet are still trying to insist that the outcome was inevitable given that these were a new set of elections. Their view is that it will all get better in time as the electorate gets used to the idea of electing Police Commissioners.
The truth must be that the general consensus is correct. The electorate stayed away from the polls in their millions and produced the lowest turnout ever recorded in any UK-wide elections since the introduction of universal suffrage. The overall turnout was around 14.7% and the winners were, on average, elected by less than 6% of the electorate's first preference votes; no one other than the interested parties can possibly claim that this amounts to an electoral mandate. It is quite clear that the absence of information and canvassing as well as the general lack of enthusiasm for elected "Police and Crime Commissionsers" led to the vast bulk of the population delivering the ultimate raspberry to the whole idea.
In my county the election was won by the Conservative candidate, a retired RAF officer. However, while numerous other party candidates also won, a dozen of the polls were won by independent canidates, a sure sign of the electorate's disillusionment, both with the main parties and this process. The most satisfying news was that at least 3 former Members of Parliament were defeated - John Prescott in Humberside, James Plaskitt in Warwickshire and Michael Mates in Hampshire. These 3 obviously saw the new roles as an opportunity to entrench themselves in positions of power without having the restrictions of Parliament but it's clear that the electorates saw through them.
This was a disastrous mess and a total wste of money. There was virtually no publicity and I was aware of no real efforts at canvassing; to my knowledge none of the local candidates made any effort to gain my vote or the votes of anyone else in my town. It's almost as though the intention was to keep the process low-profile in order to avoid too much public recognition of what was really happening - an attempt to bring police forces under much closer political control. In the event, electors in almost a third of the country chose independent candidates and thwarted such ambitions, although 29 police forces will now be under the direct political control which 85% of their populations did not vote for.
In quoting percentages, it occurs to me that these may not quite convey the true extent of the apathy shown by the electorate. Put more starkly, across England and Wales there was an electorate of around 36.25 million of whom 5.33 million bothered to vote; the winning candidates were favoured by some 2.11 million. That is, the new Commissioners have been elected by just over 2 million out of an electorate of over 36 million, ignoring the shenanigans of second preferences.
Is this any kind of democracy ? For democracy to exist, the population must believe in it; it's plain that in the UK they no longer do and, if we ever truly had democracy, we have it no more. Democracy died on 15th November 2012; its ashes can be collected from the back door of 10 Downing Street if anyone wants them.
No comments:
Post a Comment