It is pretty rich for politicians to blame voters for the lack of interest in the UK general election.
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'Voter apathy is the enemy, Blair warns' announced the headlines this week, reporting a cabinet meeting at which Labour prime minister Tony Blair told his ministers that 'apathy and cynicism posed the biggest threat to the party's re-election' this year.
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Blair's fears of a low turnout are well founded. At the last general election, in 1997, 71.5 percent of the electorate voted - the lowest figure since before the Second World War. Turnouts in more recent polls have sunk to record lows: 29 percent in the May 1999 local elections, 23 percent in the June 2000 elections to the Euopean parliament, between 27 and 38 percent in three parliamentary by-elections last November. Dire predictions that only 65 percent might bother to vote in a May general election may turn out to be over-optimistic.
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Despite growing public disillusionment with the government, Labour remains well ahead of the floundering Tories in the public opinion polls - 52 percent to 31 percent, according to a MORI poll in mid-January. New Labour's 'nightmare scenario', however, is that a low turnout will allow the Tory Party's supposedly harder core vote to punch above its weight. That nightmare has come closer to reality since the Peter Mandelson affair, with polls suggesting the public now considers New Labour as sleazy as the Tories.
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One aide to Conservative leader William Hague is reported as saying that 'Even if our polls go down to 20 percent but there is only a 30 percent turnout at the election, we will win'. He was whistling past the graveyard. But the scaredy-cat Labour leadership fears that he may have a point. So combating voter apathy is now considered the key to securing victory.
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What does this discussion say about the politicians' view of the voting public? 'Apathetic', after all, means insensitive to suffering, passionless, and 'indolent of mind'. The implication is that voters are too stupid, lazy or uncaring to turn out.
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The politicians' answer to voter apathy appears to be to avoid discussing political issues at all, in case it might 'put people off'. The major parties are planning short election campaigns that will not start until Blair announces polling day, for fear of 'boring' the electorate. This attitude also appears to have infected the media, with the BBC planning shorter election news broadcasts than during the 1997 campaign.
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In effect, the parties plan to treat voters as if we were bored children, who need to be entertained and emotionally manipulated in order to keep us interested. The election campaign is being reduced to a contemporary version of the Roman circuses, designed to placate the mob while the oligarchy gets on with governing the country. So we can expect plenty more cheap political stunts between now and polling day, whether that means the Tories playing the law and order card or New Labour whipping up outrage over babies' body parts.
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Contemptuous of the voting public, our politicians are largely responsible for creating the cynicism that they now decry. The bottom line is that we are being treated as passive consumers rather than political subjects, who can be inveigled into voting with shallow adverts instead of solid arguments. New Labour's 'Thank you for voting for change' campaign sums up this cynical school of politics.
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Those who just want to say 'No thanks' to being treated like infantile idiots will find some serious, grown-up debate in spiked-election between now and May.
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Mick Hume is editor of spiked
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