Recent failures of British democracy lead voters to feel that being ignored by Government is the most likely consequence of casting a vote and participating in democracy, writes Mary Evans

Evans, Mary

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LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/02/14/uk-politics-disconnect/We are not ‘all in this together’: British democracy issuffering from the disconnect between politicians and thewider publicFeb 14 2012Recent failures of British democracy lead voters to feel that being ignored byGovernment is the most likely consequence of casting a vote and participating indemocracy, writes Mary Evans.Many voters are perhaps wondering if they have developed acute memory loss: did wereally vote for the potentially damaging re-organisation of the NHS or governmentspending cuts that so radically enforce social inequality? How did our participation inrepresentative democracy bring about policies that the majority of voters might havehad (and still have) some reservations about?In these times of increasingly stark differences between austerity and affluence it is perhaps useful toask questions about both the power that is invested at elections, and the power that is then removed.These curious events, in which voters become disenfranchised at the very moment that the votes arecounted, would seem to have become a feature of British politics: from the Iraq war to the most localdispute about planning laws, the rhetoric about ‘listening’ and ‘consultation’ means nothing.In addition, governments that have a patchy record of integrating expert opinion into their politicalactions and choices are also those that appear to devote so much energy to public statements, mostnoticeably about ‘skills’ and ‘knowledge economies’. This double disenfranchisement would suggestthat at all levels of collective political and civic participation, from turning up to vote to producing areport that spells out a contradiction to a proposal of a new government policy, for example, theincarceration of a majority of prisoners, being ignored is the most likely consequence.We might wonder who is it that guards the guards and traditionally ask ‘Quis custodiet ipsoscustodies?’ We might now add the question ‘who will represent the unrepresented?’ Who will represent(and, who does represent, in current British politics) those on whom cuts to benefit payments willimpose most sharply, those professional groups so often subject to government demonization, thoselocal and national communities critical of projects for ‘growth’?It is true that in all these cases there are groups who will speak forcefully but the more importantquestion is that of who will take the political step of joining up some of the dots between these variousaspects of contemporary British politics. It is surely not enough for the Labour Party to concede theThatcherite naturalisation of the market economy without any recognition of the implications of thatconcession. Given that the word ‘capitalism’ has been spoken aloud and in public it is extraordinarythat the connections that the word makes possible still seem to remain a matter of secrecy.Thus the real connections of the social world, between wealth and poverty, between low wages andvast rewards, between the essential provision for the many that the state provides and the fantasy worldof the apparently magically funded ‘big society’ are somehow allowed to disappear or re-appear asquestions about personal capacity and commitment. We know (and have known ever since educationalachievement was first measured) that children from homes with few material resources perform lesswell in education than children from more prosperous homes and yet we still allow ourselves to bebeguiled by stories about the failure of state schools rather than the failure of the political will of thestate to confront ancient information about the consequences of inequality.What is disconcerting about current politics is thus the absence of two kinds of connections: thatbetween the social ‘issues’ that confront us and the political economy within which those ‘issues’ occurand the connection between what we know and how we use that knowledge. In both absent connectionswe, the electorate, are not represented: the fatuous assertion that ‘we are all in this together’ ignoresboth the reality of many people’s lives and our capacity to recognise, and to record, the differencesbetween us.Please read our comments policy before posting.You may also be interested in the following posts (automatically generated):1. Unfair, expensive and a politicians’ fix – why British voters should reject the Alternative Vote2. Phone-hacking and press reforms: British journalism needs a new sense of ethics but politiciansshould not be allowed to move the goalposts3. Just 224 large donations from fewer than 60 sources accounted for two fifths of the donationincome of the top three parties across a decade of British politics. This is far too narrow a basefor the health of UK democracy.4. The Alternative Vote is a worthwhile reform that will make a big difference in improving thedemocracy and accountability of British politicsThis entry was posted in Fairness and Equality , Mary Evans and tagged power , UK , uk government ,uk politics , voting . Bookmark the permalink . Edit

We are not ‘all in this together’: British democracy is suffering from the disconnect between politicians and the wider public

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