Breaking the mould: How to engage more people in politics

The next General Election may be 2 years away but many ‘safe’ (those with substantial party majorities) constituencies are selecting prospective Parliamentarians who will almost certainly be their next MP. One such seat is Cambridge NE where the Conservatives have a healthy 7,500 majority based on 2005 projections.

Of the 22,000 people who voted Conservative in 2005, only 340 were paid up members of the party. Only 80 members attended the selection of Steve Barclay with 63 voting for the eventual winner, meaning less than 0.3% of the 22,000 who voted Conservative at the last election determined who is going to be representing Cambridge NE in Parliament at the next general election.

Now I have nothing against Steve Barclay. I have never met the man and know nothing about this credentials though I have no doubt he is a very able and capable person who will do his best to represent the people of Cambridge.

My concern is with the process and the state of our democracy. The above scenario is not unique to Cambridge. Constituencies up and down the country are in the same predicament. Membership of political parties is at an all-time low. My own guess is that the membership in Conservative constituency parties average less than 100 members. In many cases, several constituencies together will struggle to muster this number. In the last General Election, many seats selected their prospective Parliamentarians with fewer than a dozen members.

With sharp drops in the number of people voting at local (average turnout less than 25%) and general elections (average turnout less than 60%), political parties and politicians need to rethink how we engage people.

In 2003, I was elected to Northampton Borough Council with less than 600 votes, less than 30% of the 25% who bothered to cast their vote. The turn out in some local seats is meager with many seats going uncontested. This is a complete collapse of the democratic process.

Since David Cameron became party leader, Open Primaries have been introduced to give the wider public the chance to influence the selection of the next Conservative candidate and potential MP. A welcome move, the idea has generated some interest but the participation levels remain low. It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that our politicians are representing us and our views or that they have the public mandate to serve.

Large swathes of the country are either red (Labour) or blue (Conservative) and where political activity is confined to the incumbent maintaining the status-quo. In 2005, I contested Burnley where Labour had a monopoly of the seat for over 7 decades. Election after election, the people returned a Labour MP. This position coincided with a complete lack of activity and a mindset that ‘we wont win here’ from the other parties. This attitude often leads to the opposition selecting candidates at the last minute and spending very little time, energy or finances to bring about any type of effort to change the inevitable outcome at each and every election. This attitude also deprives the people of a viable alternative, leading to a complete lack of faith in the system.

The solution does not lie in compulsory voting as some may be suggesting. The solution lies in political parties abandoning their territorial attitude and spending their time and energy evenly across the country rather than seeking to shore up their core vote in safe seats. Unless there is major shift in the attitude of parties as to how they approach the ‘safe’ seats, more and more people will feel alienated. With lower turnouts at each election, fewer people will determine who represents us and scenarios like Cambridge NE will become the norm raising questions about whether any of our MP’s come to Parliament with a public mandate.