ON MONDAY Tony Blair went electioneering in Birmingham. He needed protection from an armed helicopter and half the West Midlands police. As in liberated Iraq, so in Birmingham Mr Blair can no longer walk the public streets but must stick to a “secure zone”, here a school playground.
The children declined to be election fodder. One youth declared Mr Blair a fake for having “too small ears”. Most went on doing whatever they do during break in a league-tabled, performance-bonused, challenge-funded Blairite “academy”. They screached, fought, banged into detectives and discussed the shocking price of drugs.
Mr Blair’s face had to show a giant effort of will. His smile seemed at a loss. What am I doing here? it cried. Yesterday I was safe in Normandy with George Bush and world leaders. Tomorrow I shall be safe in the US with George Bush and more world leaders. World leaders are what I do these days, said the smile. I can do Moses on Sinai. I can do Henry at Agincourt. I can even do God at the creation of new Labour. What the hell am I doing in Perry Beaches, Birmingham?
The answer is democracy. If tomorrow is Super Thursday, then this must be Birmingham. Mr Blair must smile even if the smile goes out to tender and is won by a used-car dealer from spaghetti junction. Worse, tomorrow is two elections in one, for the European Parliament and for local councils. The Government has even added an “experiment” of postal voting in the North of England, well away from the London media in case of fiasco.
The first test is going to be the turnout. Politicians are now like priests. They would rather we patronised their own church, but any church is better than none. They gaze out across the political landscape and see only apathy and irreligion. The masses must be moved from their television couches to worship in the polling booths.
The European election does not matter. Its outcome has no impact on “who rules Britain” because the European Parliament has no executive responsibility. The emergence of the UK Independence Party has turned it into a virtual referendum on Europe, a unique one. A vote for the UKIP is not a vote against Labour or Tory. It is simply a no to Europe.
The real elections are the other ones. Local councils still administer two thirds of public services and the recent decline in participation has been alarming. It has undermined local government legitimacy and boosted the Treasury’s case for central control. Nobody who cares for healthy democracy can ignore this trend. Declining turnout is a pan-European phenomenon, but in most of Europe reformers are determined to counter it. Only in Britain is it treated as an exogenous disease, like global warming or the decline of the red squirrel.
Turnouts in British local elections are shocking. They are not just worse than anywhere, they are far worse. Average participation rates in European sub-national elections over the past decade have been 80 per cent in Italy, 79 per cent in Sweden, 76 per cent in Spain, 72 per cent in Denmark, 70 per cent in Germany and 59 per cent in France. In America, state elections are in the 40-50 per cent range but these figures reflect complex registration regimes. Turnout of registered voters averages 65 per cent.
The British figure is 35 per cent and falling. It is appalling not because British people have no interest in their communities. They are deeply interested. When asked if they want more democracy they invariably say yes. Londoners were eight to one in favour of recovering metropolitan self-government. Asked by MORI which tier of democracy people most trust, they choose the tier closest to home, the local town or district council.
Yet they do not vote. The reason is no mystery. It is that British local government has less power and can make less impact on public services than anywhere else. The electorate is not stupid. If voting in local elections makes no difference, why bother? When national parties hijack local elections as popularity tests, why flatter them?
The Government’s introduction of postal voting is sensible. It makes sense both in itself and as prelude to a wider use of electronic franchise. Noble though it may be to force citizens to stomp to their primary school or village hall, most have a hundred reasons for not bothering. Postal voting removes one reason.
The pity was that reform was given to John Prescott to organise. Mr Prescott has no interest in council elections, only in extending the power bases of his regional offices and ensuring that no subsidiary democracy gets in their way.
I cannot see the case against going another step and making voting in local elections compulsory. Citizenship is a formal concept involving diverse obligations. Local taxes are compulsory. Sending children to school is compulsory. Obedience to planning laws is compulsory. Jury service is compulsory. Even signing an electoral register is compulsory. It is hardly a leap towards Leninism to ask those on the register to complete a subsequent postal ballot. There can always be a box for “none of the above”.
Compulsory voting has existed in Australia since 1915, with roughly 5 per cent registering a non-vote. It exists in whole or part in Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, Austria, Switzerland and most of Latin America. Participation rates run at over 90 per cent, with no detectable bias towards any end of the political spectrum. There is supposedly a mild incentive to the inclusion of minorities, which is hardly a bad thing. Participating in a ballot is not a matter of voluntarism or compulsion. It is merely a civic duty.
To the hard men and women of Westminster, this is all wimp talk. They recognise only votes for themselves. Postal voting is an attempt to avoid humiliation in the European elections, that is all. The decline of local democracy is of no concern since by definition it enhances the status of Westminster parliamentarians.
Thus why should Birmingham need civic potency — as does Munich, Toulouse, Milan or Barcelona — when it can enjoy the beneficent rule of a Government Office for the West Midlands? Is not Cornwall better ruled from Bristol than from distant Truro or Penzance? Is not Kent well-governed from Guildford, as now proposed?
The one argument against compulsory voting in Britain is that it would mask the reason for its necessity, the malaise that has led to collapsing turnouts. When citizens go to the polls elsewhere in Europe it is because the polls matter. It makes a difference who is mayor, who is governor, who is councillor. These individuals and institutions provide schools and clinics. They levy and relieve taxes. They determine planning applications.
In many of these countries such powers have specifically been devolved in recent years. As a result, local democracy resists the centre. It confronts (and disobeys) Brussels and the health and safety apparat. Its citizens fight bureaucracy, where Britons merely cower.
Tomorrow’s two elections are thus sides of the same coin. The rise of the UKIP reflects public rage at the inevitability of Brussels aggrandisement, which no British government has seemed able to check. One day that rage will be turned on Westminster, now displaying exactly the same power mania so deplored in Brussels. Last month, Mr Prescott gratuitously reintroduced Tory rate-capping, stripping a dozen councils of accountability to their electors. He is to local democracy what Donald Rumsfeld is to prison reform. Yet the Tories did not protest.
The UKIP is precursor of a Cornwall Independence Party, a Wiltshire IP, a Norfolk IP, a Derbyshire IP, perhaps modelled, heaven help us, on the London IP, also known as Ken Livingstone. There will be rate strikes, nimby riots and High Court suits. Then prime ministers will dare go nowhere without helicopter gunships. Then and only then shall Britons know the power of the vote.
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk
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