-Caveat Lector- 22 February 2001 You don't have to be mad to vote here... <http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000054C3.htm> UK prime minister Tony Blair has been attacking voter cynicism and apathy again - in a major policy speech that made no mention of the air strikes against Iraq, which the US and UK governments had launched less than 48 hours earlier. The authorities treat an act of war as a matter of 'routine' that does not need to be publicly debated, and then wonder why so many people feel politics to be irrelevant to their lives. Blair's speech, made last Sunday (18 February 2001) at a conference in Glasgow, emphasised that what Labour fears in the coming general election is not Conservatism, but cynicism. As The Times (London) put it, the overarching theme of 'Labour's spring conference/pre-election rally' was 'fear of the missing voter'. The UK government worries that, with the turnout widely expected to be the lowest since the Second World War (easily beating 1997's record low of 71 percent), the Tories could make gains by default. Indeed it is a sign of New Labour's deep insecurity that, the further ahead they get in the opinion polls, the more worried they become that voters will not bother turning out for a non-contest. To help counter the lack of interest now gripping the nation, the UK government has launched a £3million PR campaign encouraging people to 'Use your vote'. This coincides with the new Representation of the People Act, which will make it easier for many to vote. Among other measures, the Act allows people to register to vote at any time, enables everybody to ask for a postal vote, lets the homeless join the electoral register, and grants the vote to prisoners on remand and to those in mental health institutions (unless they are being held for criminal behaviour). These measures have won broad support from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, both of which are keen to be seen recruiting people to participate in representative democracy. Yet a closer look at the assumptions that underpin these measures reveals the unhealthy state of that system. For example, offering us all a postal vote in today's context looks more like the endorsement of electoral passivity than the expansion of democracy. It reflects the notion that voters are essentially passive consumers to be courted through adverts in the comfort of their own homes, rather than active political subjects who need to be engaged with and inspired to get out and vote. Some of the other moves to expand the electorate also look like rather desperate - not to say 'cynical' - bean-counting measures, designed simply to get more crosses in boxes. If putting polling stations in supermarkets was a brazen stunt, putting them in prisons looks even more surreal (although, with Jack Straw at the Home Office, remand prisoners make up a potentially sizeable body of voters). Some of us might think that giving mental patients the vote denigrates the democratic process of rational decision-making. But, under the holy banner of 'social inclusion', New Labour can now shrug off such concerns and sign up the lunatic community for the electoral register. Politicians of all parties are patronising the electorate, emphasising our responsibility to take part in an election by post or hand, as if voting was the same as paying your council tax bill; next stop, democracy by direct debit. The fact that they might have some responsibility for giving us something worth voting for seems never to occur. We have discussed before on spiked how, in the battle for the all-important 'grey vote', the parties are treating pensioners with thinly disguised contempt, as bodies to be bought on the cheap. At the other end of the age scale, there are concerted efforts afoot to patronise young voters into the polling booth. 'Don't be apathetic!' demands one leading think-tank's youth engagement campaign: 'Get fired up and tell Home Office minister Paul Boateng, Tony Robinson and Billy Bragg what you do and don't care about' in a Friday afternoon chat at the Comedy Store. One flaw in this cunning plan to use the likes of Billy and Baldrick to get young people involved is that most already have a pretty clear idea as to whether government ministers like Boateng 'do or don't care about' what they think. The advert adds that Boateng will only be there 'subject to government business' (such as, perhaps, another routine air raid), which nicely sums up the gap between the real business of politics and this kind of empty exercise. The politicians should not feign surprise if, when told by all parties to 'Use your vote', the bemused response from many will be - 'Why?'. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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