I personally think that the BBC is spot on for saying that they want to do more to promote politics and trust in the political system of the UK in the future, but also that in turn it make themselves look stupid for having not done more in the past on the subject. There have also been comments around saying that the move was a bribe, effectively, and this is an interesting if not slightly irrelevant angle.

From this has arisen some discussion about why the BBC need to do this, questioning just why people are disengaged with politics. Some say that it's because there is no mystery any more, and that it's too open, too ugly. Other's say that the media's closeness just shows up how clandestine politics can still be. Personally I have to say let's face it, it's not the openness or mystery of politics that stops people from engaging. I doubt the people sitting around post war were going and voting still because of the allure of the mystery behind Westminster, and I severely doubt people aren't getting involved now because things are seemingly more transparent.

The trouble is we have no political development at the moment. The Media have made the whole thing look more like a circus than democracy and disenfranchisement has to have happened when manifesto's have been broken while politics is so open to scrutiny. Unlike an issue coming up people get fired up about, when a government breaks it's promises AND the other party really don't sound like they're going to do any better you get people wondering what the point is of voting since even punishing the current government will only put another promise breaking one into power.

Compare this now to parties haggling over which one thought of it first and variations of the same theme being echoed throughout debates. Quite clearly we live in a time now when the Tories have decided to be much less right wing and Labour have decided to become much less left. With Liberal Democrats now eschewing from the left as well it's becoming more like watching three egotistical and stubborn old men that all agree on the same point but don't want to be the one that submits first and concedes it wasn't his explanation that says it better.

In a wholly more existential light it may be the case that we're all a bit too enlightened now to get excited by supposed "grand ideas", with too little time on our hands as a nation when taking work in to account along side families and loved ones it seems as though most people would rather just tune out until the general election comes, and even then can't be bothered any more. When these grand plans are rolled out now we seem to feel a sense of the inevitable, doing more to hope that the plan was good in the first place because we know we have no chance whatsoever of really changing the tide.

On another issue, local politics is non-existent wherever I've been, I admit there must be MP's out there that must actually do the job of representing their constituency but not wherever I've been, even in Bristol West the Lib Dem MP has seconded a motion to the detriment of the main demographic in his area, there's no-one to champion broad groupings of communities in to getting in to the spirit, as it were, while MP's turn against their own constituents in favour of more national policy. Of course I say this looking back, and have to say I am pleasantly surprised by my new Lib Dem candidate for my local constituency who has already been personally canvassing for opinions on local problems, and has set up an easy to access consultation email system that keeps people like myself feeling like we're actually taking part in shaping decisions and directions. By contrast I send letters to my current (labour) MP urging him to read articles such as that about faking biometric data on Bad Science and get a response back that is party line thinking and a conclusion that admits he hasn't read what I asked him to before replying. With this kind of attitude and respect for constituents how is anyone meant to feel like parliament is listening?

On this issue of disenfranchisement, it is perhaps encouraging to see some Labour MP's and activists have recently recognised this with a publication on the matter. What is clear is that better campaigning at local constituency level increases turn out nationally, and individual party campaigns increase votes for their own party. Common sense really, but it seems as though the big two parties at least have forgotten this in the past. I say the big two, because Lib Dem's manage to punch above their weight when it comes to turning results out of election spending, only managing to spend about 10% of the total money spent nationwide by all parties at elections they manage to equate that to 20+% of the popular vote. It seems to me to be no great surprise that a party that do focus so much more on the local area's they've won can make their money go further when it comes to popularity, even if it doesn't translate in to seats.

Looking at the popular vote over history, and specifically post-war Britain, Labour and Tories have a trend of declining popularism while the Lib Dem's have largely grown from the Liberal parties ashes well, and in the last 10 years Labour have nose dived in popular opinion, while Tory strategic spending (of almost 45% of the spending nationally by all parties) has barely drawn them any more of the popular vote then when they first lost power to Labour. This doesn't necessarily prove that less campaigning is happening by Labour and the Conservatives, but it sure as hell means that other parties such as the Lib Dem's are either doing it better, have appeared more as an acceptable alternative to both of the big two parties, have benefited from more marginality in their seats, or a combination of all three.

The clear message has to be, in my mind, that the level of perceived effort and representation by constituency parties and MPs has dropped in the last decade or so, combined with a lack of marginality and the convergence of ideologies it has all amounted to much lower turn out. With the Conservatives now much more marginal in opinion polls the only two issues remaining that stand in the way of bringing turnout back above the 70% mark is the lack of local representation and engagement along with a lack of clear definition between at least two of the three main parties.