The death of politics

Politics is dead. RIP politics. Long live pragmatism, opportunism, careerism- anything but politics of vision. It has all now become a game of upmanship. Tories promise £500 for pensioners to help with Council Tax; the party of government spoils it by offering £200. All the opposition parties lay out their wares for struggling first time house buyers. Labour doubles the stamp duty threshold.

The major political parties have coalesced into the middle ground. They are now only separated by differences of emphasis, nuance and, to put it blatantly, the different ways they spin their lines. Since 1945, the Tories have accepted the need for a welfare state. Labour, for its part, ditched commitment to nationalisation and accepted the universality of the market.

Although Labour has invested unprecedented amounts in public services, and has effectively used the tax system for redistribution, it has been reluctant to clothe these achievements with a vocal, overarching vision. Doing so would risk reviving memories of the days it was stuck in the ice age, with its reputation for inefficiency, labour militancy and bloated bureaucracy.

The Tories have also gone through a process of catharsis, hoping to remove any memories of Thatcherite excess. The party of family values and morality now regrets its stance over section 28. It is now courting votes from quarters it was not traditionally associated with.

What has been the effect of all this? How has it affected public attitudes?

Clearly by turning people away from formal politics. Party membership is at an all time low. Only 59% of the electorate turned out to vote in 2001. 40% of those who turned out voted Labour. Lest we get carried away about Labour’s landslide, these figures, less often cited, should act as a wake up call. Disengagement on such a scale calls into question the moral legitimacy of mandates.

Disillusion with formal politics does not mean people have lost interest altogether. They are just expressing it in other ways. Hundreds of thousands of people protested against the Iraq war. Tens of thousands of people recently turned up in London to protest against the continued occupation of Iraq. There are hundreds of networks of people, often interacting over the Internet, interested in political, environmental, developmental and rights issues.