AND THE WINNER WAS....None of the Above

So...farewell, then, Ken. Londoners can look forward to another four years of Boris. Just over half of the eventual poll, including the second options, returned BoJo to City Hall by a margin of 62,000 votes, or around a three per cent majority. Ken has indicated that this was his last attempt at the top job. Johnson has indicated that he will work hard to cut Council Taxes, put more bobbies back on the beat, improve infrastructure and Transport For London and...basically all the things that Ken said he would do. The difference is that Ken knows how to run things and Boris...well, he knows how to run a campaign for Mayor and he is, you know, a funny bloke and all that. Just what London needs, of course, rather than a dull, leftie technocrat that can actually deliver on his promises in these difficult times. And what Londoners need right now is a jolly good chap that can carry off all the hand-shaking required for the Olympics and someone who knows how to behave at a jubilee pageant...

"OK, then Bozzer, the job's yours in 2015..."

With all the hype around the London Mayoral election, one could be forgiven for thinking that the voters would have turned out in their droves to cast their ballot for the Old Etonian toff or the Old School GLC wunderkind of days gone by. But no...the turnout was as apathetically low in London as elsewhere in the UK; somewhere around one third of the electorate being bothered enough to vote.

What does this mean? Well, first of all, it means that we get the government (local or national) that our apathy deserves. It also means that, whomsoever is elected in any poll, cannot assume to have a mandate to govern when the majorities are often tantalisingly slender, which means that the successful candidate/party is probably in a seat that has been voted for by about one in six of the electorate. However, it could be argued that it is democracy at work. It's as if two-thirds of the adult population had read PJ O'Rourke's seminal work ("Don't Vote, It Just Encourages The Bastards") and taken it literally. This could be true as two-thirds of the adult population rarely get beyond the title of a book, these days, before deciding they can't be arsed to read it or won't do so because it isn't available as an 'App' on their bloody i-phones.

But let's assume, for the moment, that one third of the electorate is sufficiently representative and, if we do, then here are the highlights of last week's elections:

D'oh!

The Liberal Democrats have been utterly shafted. They lost almost half of the council seats that they had. And why? Because Liberals Democrats cannot possibly sit comfortably in a coalition with Conservatives. That's all...that's it. What on earth was Clegg thinking back in 2010? Well, the first thing was that he could be "Deputy Prime Minister" and that it would be a power base for Liberal policy delivery. The second thing was, er...OK, there wasn't a second thing and the first thing didn't work. The saddest aspect of all of this is that Clegg still believes that he wields some power. And yet some of the main post-election interviews on the BBC were with Lembit Opik, who was allowed to voice his pointless opinions on the leadership of the party, and with Paddy Ashdown, who has been a marvellous apologist for Clegg over the last two years but the weariness in his responses were all too telling. 

Twenty-six per cent of the council seats that were fought over on May 3rd were won by "Other" parties' candidates. That's the likes of all the Independents, UKIP, Galloway's "Respect" Party and some loonies. The "Others" lost about ten per cent of the seats they had in the previous ballots in the councils that were up for grabs this time but that was compared to the forty-two per cent lost by the Lib Dems and the twenty-eight per cent by the Tories. Four per cent of the 181 councils that were voted for on May 3rd are now controlled by "Other", compared to only three per cent controlled by the Lib Dems. Opik has suggested that Clegg has to stand down as leader of the Lib Dems and - for the first time ever in my life - I agree with the Cheeky-Girl-Banging self-publicist (although Opik was also of the opinion that Clegg should remain as Deputy PM - I don't get that bit).

 

And that's it...the only highlight of the local elections and the London Mayoral elections is that the Liberal Democrats are the spent force that we always knew them to be. The rest of it is pointless rhetoric. Miliband cannot take the high ground because the turnaround in Labour's favour this time is less than it was last time (mid-term) when the Tories were in opposition. Cameron can't ascend the hill that Miliband wishes to climb either, even though his mid term loss was less than thirty per cent. Harriet Harperson's conclusion was that "the people" had become disillusioned with the coalition and had decided not to turn out to vote. That might have been the case but it didn't take the cleverest hack to point out that her argument was self-defeating for Labour...D'oh!

Two ordinary voters on May 3rd

Turn-out at the polls was obviously a factor, though. There was a time, years ago when I started voting, when poor weather could dictate the turn-out and that it was siad that rain favoured Tory voters because they were more likely to have their own cars. But one of the things that has a mjor impact is that here, in the UK, we seem always to vote on Thursdays. Not that I'm a fan of doing things the French way, but why don't we vote on a Sunday? We don't because we have failed miserably to separate church and state, but with only a handful of practising christians left, the objections to voting on the sabbath are minimal. Besides, we could use churches as polling stations (as well as synagogues, mosques and other temples just to be fair all round) which would please the bishops as they could claim greater attendances. What we can't do is go down the Australian route (and that of some totalitarian states) that makes it illegal not to vote, because there is the option to cast for "None of the Above", so you can guess who'd win every time.

Rather than force people to vote, we should try some encouragement that has nothing to do with politics. There are 45 million people eligible to vote in the UK. £10 each is £450m. The banks aren't lending any money so they've got plenty lying around so this can be funded by a levy on UK banks proportionate to their capitalisation. When you turn up at the polling station and have your name ticked off, the officials give you a crisp tenner for your trouble. Voters who feel patronised can have the opportunity of foregoing the £10 or dropping it into one of an array of charity boxes on offer.

If the great unwashed and other scumbags are encouraged by £10, then the demographic of the active electorate will change dramatically and, as a result, government and opposition manifestos to woo them.

On the other hand, it might just be better to go with O'Rourke.