IS THE PARTY REALLY OVER FOR THE BIG THREE?

The rows upon rows of empty seats on show at all three big three party political conferences this year was less a sign of revolutionary zeal as in “Les Miserable”, and more a sign of “The miserable old sods” as in “no longer relevant”

Of course TV conference watching itself is hardly ever viewing figure gold, but even those of you who switched on during the adverts or caught brief glimpses on the news must have been as shocked as I was at the lack of interest being shown by those in the audience and also the lack of members actually in attendance.

What for me was even more galling were the Leaders Speeches, each played out against carefully choreographed backdrops worthy of the best the West End can muster, a blur of young, carefully ethnically mixed smiling faces, happy clapping at every opportunity, but just where had all these people been when I viewed the conference earlier I thought? it was if they had simply been shipped in for the occasion.

But that’s the state we are in, our politics are boring, they have become an irrelevance to most peoples everyday lives and even if we did listen to what they were saying we still wouldn’t believe what they were saying, their currency value it seems is at an all time low.

Of course it wasn’t always like this, in the golden age of British politics in the 1950’s and 1960’s the two Harold’s (Macmillian and Wilson) played to vast audiences. The Tory party in its heyday for instance had nearly 3 million members, Labour in the 60’s skirted around the 1 million mark, and even the Liberals in one guise or other at one point convinced hundreds of thousands of people to join their cause.

But today? Well the figures are shocking, out of a population of 68 million people the three main party’s can only muster between them less than 300,000 party members, and none of the three have anything to cheer about. The Tories, it is believed have seen their membership haemorrhage since the rise in UKIP’s stock and now even insiders suggest that the total figure may have slipped down for the first time in a century to below the 100,000 mark, and whats even more worrying for those in the blue corner is that this figure is less than half of what it was when David Cameron took over as leader (253,600).

Labour’s figures are believed to be steady at around 150,000 but they are not celebrating as with changes ahead to Union affiliation and a desertion of Left minded members they are now in a race to the bottom with the Tory’s as to who can first catch the Liberal Democrats whose dwindling membership is now as low as the 40,000 mark.

So to put it all into perspective that makes the total number of party members joined up to the three main political party’s in the UK in 2013 at around the 290,000 mark, or less than one third of the number who are paid up members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Over 1,000,000 (1m).

Its not all doom and gloom for politico’s, some party’s memberships are actually on the rise. UKIP it seems may even have overtaken the Lib Dems at 40,000+ and my own party the Green Party is approaching the 20,000 mark after years in the single figure thousands bracket.

But even so those of us who make up the political classes all combined still only represent about 0.9% of the population!

And yet the same lack of interest is not to be found elsewhere in Europe to such a worryingly high extent. In Austria 17% of the population are in a political party in Greece 16%. On average in Europe 5% of the population are members of party’s, and only two countries Poland and Latvia show less interest in politics than UK citizens.

The UK public it seems have already decided that the idea of the political party is just not attractive to them any more, but what do we replace them with? After all as Pericles reminded us “Just because you do not not take an interest in Politics, doesn’t mean that politics won’t take an interest in you!”

For example that dwindling membership above is providing 95% of our 650 MP’s and 23,000 Councillors in the UK ,(others include SNP, PLaid Cymru, Sinn Fein etc) and as the numbers dwindle the age range gets higher and the task of finding candidates of any quality, let alone those really fit for office becomes ever harder.

So if you ever thought that our elected betters were simply a bunch of irrelevant nobody’s chosen from a dwindling list of the undeserving and the inadequate, you would probably be about right!

But is it really a healthy state to be? I don’t believe it is and I hope that a new politics can somehow rise out of the ashes of our failed political system, but one thing is certain, the party for the big three is most definitely over!

SHORT SHORTS

Thought I would just catch up on a few stories for purpose of updating Joe Public on all matters local national and international.

EALING COMEDY

Regular readers will be aware of the ongoing teething problems with Northampton Borough Councils's (and DDC's) 14 year contract with Enterprise Services to provide Refuse Collection, Grass Cutting and Street Sweeping Services across Northampton and Daventry. Well the so called "teething problems" are still causing much pain to all concerned and are quickly turning into a a very nasty and prolonged toothache.

With Enterprise now it is suggested losing somewhere between £40,000 and £60,000 a week on the contract they have cut back even further on their workforce numbers, leading to more collections being missed, more grass left uncut and even less streets swept. The problems which we were told initially by the administration at NBC were little more than hiccups have now led to the Council having to look at fining the contractor £250,000 in penalties for not delivering on the service contract.

My contacts at Westbridge tell me it can only get worse in the coming months but meanwhile Northampton's woes with Enterprise as a contractor have now reached the ears of other elected members on Tory controlled Ealing Council  in West London, who are very keen not to fall into the same trap as the Borough having just engaged Enterprise, 4 months ago on a similar 15 year contract!   Enterprise took over the service from previous contractor May Gurney on April 1 2012, after it was awarded the £300 million 15-year collection contract in July 2011


Under the deal Enterprise was meant to operate a kerbside sort system for the collection of dry recyclables and food waste but following familiar  ‘teething problems’ it had to move to a commingled system to work through the backlog of missed collections. All sounding very familiar?

It now seems that after 4 months of missed collections and what letsrecycle.com called a "Fiasco in Ealing" Cllr Bassam Mahfouz, portfolio holder for transport and environment is under pressure from the opposition to resign his post over the services failures. But in an attempt to keep the attack dogs at bay Cllr Mahfouz has come up with a cunning plan, he is sending a crack squad down to see us all here in Northampton as he explains " “What we don’t want is to be a year down the line and then fining them. We are getting the guys to go down to those councils to learn what they did right and wrong.”

I could save Cllr Mahfouz and Ealing Council some money on funding the journey as its very clear what they did wrong, they signed a contract full of holes, put up as a lost leader, at a price no one could ever deliver the service for, they (as in all three political parties) then ignored the two independent members on the Council who warned them that this was bound to happen and banked the savings regardless of the consequences.

What a farce indeed,

ALL SIT DOWN FOR TEAM GB

As the row continues unabashed as to those unused seats at most events for this years London Olympics I was reminded of a conversation some weeks ago on Radio Four when the station was previewing our Gold Medal chances ahead of the Games, and what it all boiled down to was that "Sitting" was what we British do best, not just in watching the varied sporting extravaganzas, but also it seems in competing.

And so it is after an edgy start to the games and a continued wait for team GB's first gold that we must now look to those sat on their back sides to deliver the goods for Blighty. So bring on the brave rowers and the canoeists from Britain's finest public schools. All hail the horsey equestrian set with their jolly jodhpurs and jaunty japes. Cry out loud for the British Cyclists and their two wheeled velodrome heroics.

Britains Gold medal chances it seems rest solely on Britains backsides, on Boats, Bikes and Horses. So how about letting us working class folk also get in on the act? After all it is our games. I suggest the London Olympic Committee therefore immediately introduce more sitting down sports for us to compete in in this years games, we will soon rise up the medal table then.

How about Downhill Soapbox racing? I loved that as a kid, and who's for a go at a Spacehopper marathon! how delightful it would be to see all those large orange or even flag printed spherical objects bouncing up and down along the Mall in unison.

Perhaps even our Lib Dem friends could get involved with qualifiers for Olympic style Fence sitting?

SYRIA LEFT TO SUFFER AS THE WORLD LOOKS THE OTHER WAY

This blog has a very good history of predicting events local, national and even international, but for once I was hoping that I had judged it all wrong when I said that an all out civil war in Syria was probably inevitable http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/why-syrias-tears-are-wasted-on-west.html but as predicted HM Government it seems values the lives of Syrian Civilians far less than they did Libyan Civilians, there have been no cries this time for military intervention, no NATO proposed safe corridor, no NO FLY ZONE.

So what has Libya got that Syria hasn't ? Sympathy? Willpower? Oil? I explained the best I could in my last blog that the rebel army (or armies) in Syria are a diverse, complicated and split force who will probably not be able to wrestle power from the regime no matter how much they believe in their cause, and as a result the blood letting will continue unchecked. Meanwhile William Hague pops up on our screens every few days to tell us how awful it all is and how wicked Bashir Hassad is whilst saying nothing about who may replace him in any successful uprising, and also doing nothing to protect the civilian's caught up in this horrific bloody struggle for Syria's future.

The country's uprising has been played out constantly on the internet website YouTube, but while the brutal images of death remain the same, images of the armed opposition groups as also predicted are ever changing. Some groups now openly say they are affiliated with al-Qaeda, fly its flags, and say they now have training camps inside the country. Phil Rees, filmmaker and author of 'Dining with Terrorists', told Al Jazeera that for Al Qaeda, Syria is "an attractive place to come now." Who is Al Qaeda? Someone coming from Libya who helped overthrow [Muammar] Gaddafi? During Libya, they were considered to be freedom fighters and the British government supported them. Now they travel to Syria where they feel a jihad going on,"

I am sure that if the charge against the British Government of double standards being applied to different countries and different peoples has not already been made clear, then their current silence and inaction on Syria can only make it ever more translucent.

VOTE PENGUIN YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE

"Hi my name is Professor Pongoo, I am a six foot tall penguin, the cousin of Pingu and I have come from another planet to warn people about Climate Change. I am standing as your candidate for Edinburgh Council and if elected I pledge myself to attend every council meeting as your elected penguin"

An unusual, but not altogether bad platform to fight an election campaign on I guess, and it so nearly worked. Pongoo with 444 votes was well ahead of the Lib Dem candidate 370 and also the Green Party candidate  on first preference votes but in a seat determined by the alternative vote he eventually lost out to the big three in Scotland (well big two and a tiny bit) The SNP, The Labour Party and the Tories.

It was brave attempt for the Independent candidate, and the man inside the suit Mike Ferrigan, and a warning to us all that apathy and a total loss of faith with our current political system is still a leading issue even amongst the minority 30% of the population who can still be bothered to vote.

Pongoo's near miss was for me the highlight of a Local Election night that overall was a predictable and completely mind numbingly boring affair all round. OK the Labour Party won a whole shed load of seats lost in previous elections and in fairness they won more seats than even the Tories who were talking their chances up, had predicted, The Tories lost seats and the Lib Dems flat lined.  And as the local government pendulum swings against the government in situ we should by now be used to such changing fortunes.

Meanwhile down in the smoke Boris held off Ken on a "We know he is a Tory, but we quite like having a Mayor who is as mad as a goose" vote.

Proof positive if you like that even the big three revert to farce when their core vote abandons them. In fact I dare say if Boris had himself taken advise from Pongoo and dressed up in a penguin suit then his vote would have been even higher, but then if Ken had donned a Salamander Lizard outfit? who knows the Labour Party might have took the mayoralty as well?
But a 30% turnout! just where are we all heading? I recently researched party membership of the big three in Britain over the last 60 years and found that the Tory Party can lay claim to the highest ever party membership figures of the three main parties (2.9m in the 1950's) followed by Labour (1.1m again in the 50's) The Lib Dems of course are a modern phenomenon but in their various guises they always struggled to reach such dizzy heights (highest found figure 145,000 1980 SDP)

So how does that all fare against today's party membership statistics, surely given the massive rise in population since the 1950's the number of our citizens actively involved in political life must still be quite high? Not a chance, the last estimated  figures in 2010 have the three party memberships as follows;

                     Conservative: 210,000 Labour: 190,000 Lib Dems: 45,000
That's less than 500,000 members between the lot of them! or an even more alarming way of presenting it just 1.5% of the UK population between all three of them. And if you really want a sense of the size of the decline then look no further than a comparison with UK membership of the three biggest Conservation and Wildlife charities. The National Trust alone has more members than all three of the political parties combined total, and when added to memberships of the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds then the Big Three nature lovers at 5.5m members trump the party hacks by more than 5m paid up subscriptions. Maybe the RSPB vote explains Professor Pongoo's success?

Coming back to local politics, you also have to remember that we currently have 469 local councils in the UK as well as two parliaments (England and Scotland) and an two Assemblies (Wales and Northern Ireland) so given that you have to be a party member to stand for election then roughly around 30% of those combined party members would be current candidates and 10% (1 in 10) will end up being elected. You should also worry that all three of the parties amongst their membership include a proportionately high number of eccentric individuals (best written about in another blog)

New parties are also not making any in roads into the public interest. Of the most successful in recent years and also the most vile UKIP have only ever reached membership high figure of 26,000 in 2003 (now down to 16,000) and the BNP a high of 9800 in 2008 which most believe has now fallen to well below 4000

So to put it bluntly we have one of the lowest political participation rates in Europe, our political system and its parties are tired, irrelevant to most peoples everyday lives and less attractive to most voters than a six foot man dressed up in a penguin costume. One in ten of those in a party will be elected and three in ten stand for election. These are chosen by the other seven in ten who inevitably include amongst their number the politically naive, the retired and inactive and a small bunch who it is best to simply describe as socially odd, nice to be with but frankly as mad as a box of frogs

I am a socialist, those are my political ideals, I am now after 5 years out in the cold able to rejoin the Labour Party if I so wished, they along with the Greens are currently the only parties I could ever entertain signing any membership form for in the future. But before I took such a massive step I would need to know, what were their parties plans for re-engaging with a British public who are currently completely turned off to UK politics.

I don't want a debate with the 30% of the 30% who bother to vote in Local elections, I want to engage with the 70% who don't bother to vote at Local Elections and or say they never will or never have voted.

And fun as it may seem, I don't want to have to dress up in a penguin suit in order to do it.

NOT INVITED TO THE PARTY

It was a very good night locally if not nationally  for the Conservative Party with them clearing the board in Northamptonshire winning all seven parliamentary seats at the general election. Well done to them. I disagree fundamentally with their politics but the voters have spoken and it would be churlish of us to deny them our congratulations and best wishes.

It was also though an interesting result for the Labour Party, defeated in all six seats but with a vote which held up very strongly. Strongly enough in fact to deny any Liberal Democrat a victory or any give them any big surge in popular support.

Finally though it was a bad night, a very bad night for those of us who either as Independents or as smaller parties tried to gatecrash the Big Party's Party.

Despite lots of good wishes and seemingly a lot of support on the ground, voters clearly returned to the traditional fold when they finally entered the Polling Station.

Having looked at the results of other Independents and small party's locally and nationally I am starting to feel slightly pleased that I held my deposit! it seems few if any others did. Even the celebrity appeal of Esther Rantzen in Luton South did little to help her have her £500 returned.

So what did we all learn? That the country is not ready, at least at a national level for radical politics? or maybe that those of us who propose change to the three party system are wrong to do so?

Or maybe that the national media and the electorate that they aimed their guns at, got exactly what they wanted?

There is no doubt that the Leaders Debates had a huge impact on the outcome of the election, probably leading to the now hung parliament which matched its self promoted prediction, but in reality it also killed off the attempts of the minor candidates to breakthrough. I hold to the view that too many of our voting public who understandably are switched off to the local and national  political scene went to the polls expecting the names of Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown to actually be on the Ballot Paper. And the focus of the national media on the "closest election in years" and their ability to choose which policy areas to cover and which not to cover (what happened to MP's expenses debate?)  no doubt also played a big part in galvanising voters to poll in favour of the LAB/LIBDEM/CON
coalition. So where was the real debate some may ask?

But were we not supposed to have been choosing our constituency MP's? not a Prime Minister or Government? And how does a Labour candidate in Northampton South who runs a non campaign (turning up just one day a week) and missing the BBC and local newspaper hustings still end up in second place in Northampton South with nearly 10,000 votes!

Over the coming days the party's in Westminster will horse trade with each other to determine who will govern, and electoral reform will be high on the agenda and shopping list of the Lib Dems, but it is not only the voting system we need to change. It is also the role that our national media are increasingly  playing in determining the very outcome. Our national Parliament shouldn't continue to be used as a political TV alternative to the "X Factor" or a " Britain's not got Political Talent" beauty contest. The role of the national newspapers, the broadcast TV and Radio media and the publication of national opinion polls without any local knowledge and or weighting thrown in should all be questioned.

I accept my defeat, it was heavy, I feel personaly for those who worked tirelessly to support my challenge, and for those who had the courage and conviction to back me and vote for an alternative to the big three, and I apologise to them here and know publicly for not being able to carry their standard and banner any higher into the battle.

But tomorrow is another day, and the local elections in May 2011 are a different animal, and I have many many miles to walk before I rest.

I would also like to thank you all for reading this blog over the last few weeks, our hits have gone through the roof, keep coming back, I have lots more tales to tell! and we have many more challenges to face and battles to be fought.

Norwich North, and the winner is?

With Parliament in recess it will be some months before Chloe Smith the Tories 'Vous êtes belle, mademoiselle' and declared victor of last weeks by election in Norwich North takes her seat in the Commons Chamber. And perhaps November or December before she makes her maiden speech, and then just after the Christmas recess she will no doubt be preparing for her defence of the seat at the general election.

So what comfort can she take from her victory? surely her 7000 majority over Labours Chris Ostrowski will be enough to soothe her? even though the seat next year will be fought on the revised less favourable boundaries than was the case at the by election. (the new parliamentary boundaries only applying from the next general election)

Well, only time will tell but the real winner from last weeks poll is difficult to determine when you compare the votes cast for each of the main parties last Thursday with those from the 2005 election. Look for yourself:

Labour 2005 21,097 2009 6243 a loss of 14,854 votes

Conservative 2005 15,638 2009 13,591 a loss of 2047 votes

Lib Dem 2005 7616 2009 4083 a loss of 3533 votes

That makes a staggering drop in the votes for the three main parties from 44,300 in 2005 to 26700 in 2009 a drop in support for the combined tally of the big three of 17,600 lost votes

17,600! thats enough to win the contest outright, and at a by election prior to a general election that David Cameron's Tory party look favourites to win it is inexcusable that the Tory vote that turned out to support their candidate should fall. Labours loss was down by a staggering 70% from their 2005 support and with turnout only marginally down from 60% to 45% this was far more than a simple case of their loyal and faithful staying at home. The Lib Dems meanwhile seem to be shrinking before our eyes, becoming also rans and struggling to pick up any floating voters who now seem to prefer to vote elsewhere.


Of course UKIP (1122 to 4068) and the Greens (1252 to 3350) both did well accumilating an extra 5044 votes between them since 2005. But the bigger picture seems to be one of major discontent with the main three parties.

I believe my old friend Ian Gibson should have stood last week as an Independent, and perhaps he will do so next year. Despite the claims that he was wrong to allow his daughter to live with him in his London flat (I would have done the same) or that he shouldn't have sold the flat to her at a reduced rate (slightly more controversial, but are people saying that if he had sold it for more profit to a stranger then that would have been OK?) Ian is still well respected in the town.

It seems that Labour Party supporters in Norwich when asked on the doorstep felt that he had been harshly treated when compared with certain others in Labours higher ranks, and they were right. The kangeroo court which barred him standing for re-election cared little for the facts and only wished to take the opportunity of getting rid of one of the awkward squad who actually stood up for his constituents and refused to be controlled by the whips office. There will be MPs from all partys standing in the general election next year with far more guilty consciences than Ian, and with so many people deserting the main three parties in such huge numbers and a need for more Independent members at Westminster then I hope he considers standing again, but this time without the party straightjacket.