Polling stories

People seem surprised that the idea of elected mayors has received such a thumbs-down from yesterday's UK local elections and referenda on the proposed post for individual cities. 

Why would anyone be surprised at all? 

Elected mayors were always a pretty useless idea.

A gimmick dreamed up by political anoraks looking desperately for a Big Idea. 

Any Big Idea that happened to be passing. 

And who accordingly seized upon the perception that there's a 'democratic deficit' without facing up properly to its cause.  

People don't want elected mayors because they can't see the point of them. 

They think all politicians are rubbish. 

They are disillusioned with the whole rotten, cynical, opportunistic, unprincipled, out-to-ideological-lunch lot of them. 

That's what 'democratic deficit 'means !  

It does not mean that voters think there's a deficit in the number of politicians representing them. 

Voters think there's a deficit in what all politicians have between their ears and in their souls. 

It's not that Britain's constitution is structurally unable to deliver what the country wants and needs. 

It's that the mainstream political class has become constitutionally incapable of delivering what the country wants and needs.

People don't want yet another bunch of elected politicians to fail to do what they are elected to do. 

They want the ones who are there already, whether Cabinet ministers or leaders of local councils, to do what they were elected to do.  

That they are not doing so is why the biggest winner from these local election seems to be the None-of-the-Above Party.  

This means that over sixty percent of voters did not vote

Sixty percent expressed their frustration by not voting.

Note the mainstream media did not focus on this.

The mainstream media yabberred on about who won and by how much.

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As if this in some magic way alters anything.

Sometime, somewhere the media will be obliged to acknowledge that we are all sick of these politicians.

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This is not just a British thing it is evident everywhere where voting takes place.

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Corruption is massive everywhere.

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We have all had enough.

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What to do?

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Help bring awareness of how similar our complaints are across the western world.

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That is a start.