Comment Central: Vote for the next speaker

The language and imagery of political upheaval are psychologically interesting. The bad politicians must be “purged” and Parliament must be “cleansed”, as though what was required was a political form of colonic irrigation. There is a lavish pictorial use of the idea of our leaders being smeared by, drowned in or shovelling ordure. We want to expel the stinky stuff and have it replaced by the nice, empty bowel.

Do I need to point out that our own bowels are pretty full? The majority of MPs discovered to be doing unlovely things with expenses (themselves, so far, a minority of parliamentarians) are only guilty of what we would be guilty of if someone gave us a chance. Greedy Members didn't make us rack up credit card bills and take out 125 per cent mortgages. Even so it is grimly amusing to see panicking honourables inviting the Speaker to play Strafford to their Charles I, and volunteer for execution pour sauver eux-mêmes.

Well it doesn't look like he is going to agree to the block, but a much bigger question is whether this moment marks an important changing point in British politics.

Some argue that it does, that nothing will be the same again. The British people, it is suggested, now demand an almost revolutionary alteration in how political life is conducted. There could even be riots. Or a break-up of the party system. Or a massive growth in fourth-party voting and support for independent candidates. Or all of these.

Riots have a patchy record in this country. Rioting only seems to be relevant when it works in the direction in which history is already travelling. True, the occasional old lady on the evening news has declared her desire to shoot all our politicians, but my guess is that even the now-famous Question Time barracking of Beckett, Campbell and May will have seemed slightly ill-mannered to many of our fastidious compatriots. We have elections to decide such things.

So what about an electoral enema - a gallon of phospho-soda poured into the alimentary tract of the British body politic? At the weekend it was suggested that polls presaged a massive boost in fourth-party support for UKIP, the BNP and the Greens. Detailed examination of the results, however, showed something different. In the forthcoming Euro elections 27 per cent of respondents suggested that they might change their votes from one of the big three parties to a small party. Of this quarter, 28 per cent favoured UKIP, 16 per cent the BNP and 15 per cent the Green Party.

If you do your sums this means that UKIP's vote could rise 7 per cent on its current national poll standing, and the other two could receive a boost of 4 per cent. Need I tell you that this is actually fewer votes than they achieved in the last Euro elections? It is unfair that the Greens get bracketed with the tedious obsessives of UKIP and the fading Nazi tattoos of the BNP. But the truth is that the stances of these parties do not attract large coalitions of voters.

So for yet other people the possibility of quiet revolution resides in getting a large number of Martin Bell-type independents to stand against expense-tarnished MPs. Such independents - emboldened to stand by the real possibility of busting the party system - might, one would think, provide an infusion of new blood to replace those politicians we may now lose as result of the assault on politics. There has even been a rumour of Esther Rantzen at Luton South.

That this may not be a panacea is demonstrated by the election for Hackney South in 1918 of one of the most corrupt MPs in 20th-century history, the fraudster Horatio Bottomley. Despite having already faced his first fraud trial, Bottomley received more than 80 per cent of the vote. Even incorruptibles like Esther might find it hard when journos start poring over bought copies of BBC expenses going back three decades.

But the real problem for independents is their independence. Mr Bell found himself expected to scrutinise and to vote on hugely complex legislation, without the benefit of party advice and research. When instead he chose to concentrate on constituency work, he was criticised for a poor voting record. For independents it is either whip or whim.

When I met the independent candidate for Wyre Forest, Dr Richard Taylor, before the 2001 election, there were 19 local councillors who had been elected on his local NHS campaign ticket. This party, still in existence, promises consultation, a “bottom-up” approach and a freedom from “party dogma”. But eight years on, local turnout remains the same as it was before, and the Taylor group has lost nearly half its councillors.

The independent MP for Blaenau Gwent also offered a “political revolution” on his election in 2006. He set up People's Voice as a party, with much the same prospectus as the Wyre Forest independents - all love, listening and localism. “This political tidal wave cannot stop here,” says the People's Voice website, now largely not updated for two years. More cobwebsite really.

There's a reason why this arc of independence seems inevitable. Politics, local or national, requires hard work, high commitment and good organisation. Opposing stuff in detail is difficult enough; actually running things is much worse. And when you do...

For a few years I was a parent governor for a state primary school. Every summer we had to organise an AGM for parents. We wrote reports, handed out leaflets, thought up attractive issues to discuss, and out of 650 possible sets of parents and carers we never managed to get more than 30 people to turn up. These were the same 30 who did everything else as well. Only if something went wrong did the cry go up for consultation.

In Britain disillusion with politics is usually a pre-emptive excuse. If “they” are all as bad as each other, then “we” have no responsibility to get involved, to understand the issues or join parties. Worse, we create a way of having our cake and eating it. We tell pollsters that we favour capital punishment, but without the least expectation - or desire - that Parliament will do as we say. That way we can moan about how out of touch they are, without having ourselves to shoulder the guilt of judicial murder. And so it is on so many subjects.

It is said, often, that our problem is greed. I disagree. The missing link here is civic engagement and I am beginning to think that the answer to the need for renewal is forcible and massive decentralisation of power. The voter's answer, however, will instead be victory for David Cameron in 2010. Let him sort it all out - till it's time for another flush.

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