Apathy that shames a remote political elite

SO good riddance, then, to John Prescott, whose attempt to secure one final nest egg from the taxpayer by becoming a police commissioner was blessedly thwarted by the voters of Humberside. However, the humbling of this selfregarding buffoon – whose botched policies on planning and transport cost the public so dear in the New Labour years – was the only silver lining on what was a very gloomy day for British democracy. The average turnout in the first commissioner elections was around 14 per cent – an all-time low for a nationwide poll.

The Prime Minister miserably failed to promote his flagship policing policy and – confronted by candidate lists largely full of party hacks and ex-MPs – voters unsurprisingly stayed away.

But it was the lack of public engagement in the three Parliamentary by-elections which should give the political class greatest cause for alarm.

Almost 75 per cent chose not to vote as Labour held Cardiff South, while Lucy Powell – a party apparatchik hand-picked by Ed Miliband – won Manchester Central with a turnout of 18.2 per cent, the lowest for a by-election since the Blitz.

Even in Corby, a marginal seat the subject of huge media attention, less than half of the electorate bothered to participate. Labour won not by having an inspiring candidate, but by benefitting from the backlash against Louise Mensch – imposed on the seat for politically correct reasons by the Prime Minister at the last election, only for her to desert her constituents mid-term, and flee to New York with her new American husband.

The reality is that the public is hugely disillusioned with a gilded, out-of-touch political elite which seems incapable of connecting with the aspirations and anxieties of ordinary people. The Chancellor obsesses over gay marriage when he should be focussed on easing the economic burden on hardpressed families. Ministers squabble over wind farms while doing nothing to curb the criminallyhigh energy price rises being cynically imposed on the public by firms whose profits are up by almost 40 per cent. Party placemen MPs, many of whom have never had a job in the real world, arrogantly ignore voters’ anger over the European Union, mass immigration and ever-shrinking disposable incomes. The voter apathy they have created should be of deep concern to anyone who believes in British democracy.