Trust me, I'm a politician

Britain's election: what’s causing voter apathy? Dominic Hilton visits Birmingham, England’s second city, where a vote-rigging scandal and Conservative leader Michael Howard offer some answers.

Dominic Hilton's 2005 election forays into the heart of the British political system begin with “His Majesty King Blair 1”

Britain is approaching another general election. Once upon a time, Tony Blair’s New Labour promised to renew the jaded voters’ interest in politics. But this time round, their predicted third victory comes with a distinct lack of legitimacy.

For a half-decade before the New Labour dawn of May 1997, British politics was mired in sleaze – pecuniary, perjurious, and sexually perverted.

John “back to basics” Major’s tired Tory government stood accused of debasing public life with backhanders, backstabbing and backside spanking.

Amazingly, the voters were still bored. After Margaret Thatcher’s epic eleven-and-a-half-years, Britain under Major had suffered six-and-a-half bathetic years of stale, tired and fractured government. The nation’s soul was suffocating.

Then along came Tony Blair and New Labour. Blair looked young, fresh. He strummed the guitar and wore a mullet. Evangelical by nature, he promised Britain would be reborn. “I want Britain to be young again!” he announced. His government would be “whiter than white”. “Trust is the single most important commodity in this election,” he said. “I can almost reach out and feel the sentiment among the public.” Whatever else, Tony Blair was new.

At least, he told us he was. The Labour Party’s 1997 general election manifesto (or “covenant”, as Blair curiously called it) was titled “New Labour, New Life for Britain”. Here are some excerpts:

• “Britain will be better with new Labour”
• “The vision is one of national renewal, a country with drive, purpose and energy”
• “new Labour is new”
• “I want to renew our country’s faith in the ability of its government and politics to deliver this new Britain”
• “I want to renew faith in politics”
• “The millennium symbolises a new era opening up for Britain”
• “Our aim is no less than to set political life on a new course for the future”
• “People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises”
• “politics in Britain will gain a new lease of life”
• “New Labour is the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole”

All these quotes are taken from the first few paragraphs. The first subhead reads: “A new politics”. The second subhead, of course, reads: “New Labour”.

This is a severe case of neophilia. But come the next general election in 2001, voter turnout in Britain plummeted to 58% – a historic low. Renewal, if that’s what this was, had made things worse.

A continuing decline in voter turnout is expected in the 2005 election. There has been no “new lease of life” for politics in Britain.

Things are so bad that an inquest has been set up to determine what British democracy died of. POWER is an “independent inquiry” chaired by Helena Kennedy, a leading human rights lawyer and member of the House of Lords. The commission boasts a spectrum of the great, the good and the average-but-political. In its own words, the inquiry “aims to understand why the decline in popular participation and involvement in formal politics has occurred and to provide concrete and innovative proposals to reverse the trend.”

I went to Birmingham, where Michael Howard, leader of the Conservative opposition and Man-Who-Would-Be-King, had come to give “evidence”.

Howard thinks he knows why we’re turned off by politics. “Lack of trust in politicians affects the future of our democracy by increasing political apathy,” he said back in February.

I was musing over what POWER calls the “growing disconnection between people and politics in Britain” as I picked up a complimentary copy of the Birmingham Post in the plush lobby of the MacDonald Burlington Hotel. “Council chief in votes fury” ran the headline. I read on. Three Labour candidates in the Aston ward – Muhammad Afzal, Mohammed Kazi and Mohammed Islam – stand accused of “vote-rigging fraud” (what’s that – fake efforts to stuff ballot boxes?). They deny the charges. “Three held after police terror swoops,” said the story immediately below. Next to that: “Region has one of highest drink death rates”. Inside, a column by Jon Walker asked, “Will Blair pass the honesty test at election?”

This was too perfect.

So was the low turnout for Michael Howard’s witness session. As a few slovenly dressed schoolboys and I waited for Howard to arrive, Lionel Ritchie’s Do it to Me played over the public-address system. The POWER leaflet in my hand asked in big letters: “Are we connected?” I felt uncomfortable and my mind started to wander. An eager student to my left (who’d travelled down especially from Sheffield University) asked my permission to go to the toilet. I jotted a note: are Brits still too subservient to be effective democrats?

Howard walked in. All politicians have tans. Why? This was about Britain. He was nervous and tucked his feet under his chair.

Helena Kennedy insisted that the state of British democracy is “an issue of public importance”. Howard agreed. “I do fear for the future of our democracy,” he said. I penned six words in the margin: how did it come to this?

Politicians make and then break promises, the Tory leader confessed. He recalled May 1997. “Tony Blair presented himself as a different kind of politician. There was a great appetite for reform in the country. That hasn’t happened. People feel let down.”

Was I hearing right? Howard is not a mere candidate for Blair’s job: he was a central figure in the government Blair & co kicked out eight years ago. Perhaps even he voted for Blair in ‘97?

People think problems are disconnected from their vote, Howard elaborated. Problems are seen as “like the weather” – you just have to live with them.

This sounded like good old-fashioned conservatism to me, but Howard got it all wrong and said this was a mistake. The problem is the individual politicians, not the wider democratic disconnect, he argued. Good politicians can save democracy. Vote Michael Howard. This time, it’ll be different.

There was some more sensible stuff. It’s “not a bad thing people don’t identify with a particular political party” these days, said the Conservative leader. More people are thinking for themselves. People aren’t stupid. Indeed, the public is smarter these days. We all nodded at this. Howard flashed a vote-grabbing smile.

Philip Dodd, former director of the über-hip Institute of Contemporary Arts, was not impressed. Politics, Dodd maintained, is in “competition with other leisure activities”. I looked at my POWER pamphlet again: “a healthy political system requires the active participation of its citizens”.

Howard, who is unfairly portrayed as Dracula by political cartoonists, explained how he’d just done an interview with Glamour magazine. “I am the guy I am. But I use different language for different audiences… People who read Glamour magazine have votes!”

People want control over their own lives, said Baroness Kennedy, and this means people want more involvement in policy and politics. People want control over their own lives, said Michael Howard, and this is primarily about “economic democracy”. He unveiled his big idea: THE BRITISH DREAM. Talk about it, celebrate, and, above all, live it, beamed Howard. We couldn’t. We were too busy listening to him give evidence.

Earlier that day, Howard had delivered a keynote speech on “Accountability” – “I believe in accountability,” he announced, “I just made a speech on it!” Earlier that month, I’d watched former foreign secretary Robin Cook drop his two pennies to the POWER inquiry in London. Something similar was happening. Then it hit me: they are both politicians. Their whole argument is “the public must trust us” – with the emphasis on “us”. “Politicians are the ones to blame,” Howard argued. “It’s up to us to persuade people.”

Rightly or wrongly, Howard is rooted in the system – a system that he knows is doing his party no favours right now. His only answer is for him and his colleagues to better persuade us they are not schmucks. Asked how he plans to engage young people with politics, Howard looked baffled and said: “I’m in the market for ideas.” Only 20% of 18-25 year-old British women vote. The clamour for what’s being called “the high-heeled vote” results in Howard giving speeches on sexually-transmitted infections. (What is he going to do? Pass a law against them?)

Emma B, the world’s most listened-to DJ, asked Howard what are the first three things he will do to reconnect the public to politics if he becomes prime minister in May.

Howard’s answers:

1. Stop unelected political advisors instructing the (traditionally neutral) civil service
2. Enact a Civil Service Act to do the above
3. There was no 3

A chap in the audience asked Howard if he’d ever taken drugs. Howard refused to answer. This was boring. He said how much he enjoyed going back to his constituency surgery and having to listen to miserable constituents bleat on about their tedious problems (or something of the sort – by this point I wasn’t listening too carefully). Voting in the House of Commons is not subject to strict party discipline, he joked. Each individual is free to vote according to his or her conscience. Everyone laughed.

It ended with Howard saying, “I actually believe in trusting people.” Then he dashed from the room.

I went over to a couple of young-looking girls. “Do you come to these things often?” They told me how they’d marched against the Iraq war. But “what is the point in democracy if the government aren’t going to listen?”

I shrugged, and asked them why no one their age bothers to vote. “Because government is not open,” one of them said. I was intrigued. How so? They looked at me with clear distrust. “Journalists have a relationship with government.”