A POINT OF VIEW By Brian Walden

Nearly all former politicians remember their earliest attempts at canvassing voters. It usually provides a page in their memoirs. Unfortunately, I haven't got a joke about my first attempt at canvassing, but I can make public the advice I was given privately at the time.

The hardy veteran who'd canvassed with me gave me a cup of tea afterwards and told stories about former great figures in the party. Then, as I was leaving, he gently detained me and said. "Don't kid them we can do much lad. They know nobody in authority pays any attention to them. Just listen and they'll think you're one of them."

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All of this was more than 30 years ago and, of course, politics was much more an ideological battleground then. Not too many people complained they couldn't tell the difference between the parties. Apparently they do now. I don't expect that surprises you much.

But voters say that not knowing the difference between the parties is the reason that - though they are voters - they don't actually vote. I certainly didn't know that until this week. I don't want to accuse listeners on the basis of no evidence, but I've a lingering suspicion that a lot of you have been going around spreading the idea that people don't vote because they aren't interested in politics.

Disengaged

If that's the case, you're quite wrong. It turns out the non-voters are keenly interested in politics, but unless there's a dramatic clash of opinion they won't cast a vote. They're not going to take sips of mineral-water moderation. Unless they're given a slug of the hard stuff they're going to stay at home on polling day.

Baroness Kennedy chaired the inquiry into how to engage voters

Where am I getting all this enlightening information from? A source that you're going to hear a lot about in the coming months. The Power Inquiry was set up by the Joseph Rowntree Trust at a cost of �800,000 and it has spent 18 months talking to voters about why they're so disengaged from politics.

The inquiry's head is Baroness Kennedy, a Labour peer and its members include Emma B, the Radio 1 DJ, Frances O'Grady the deputy general secretary of the TUC and Ferdy Mount, distinguished author and journalist, former head of Thatcher's policy unit and a thoroughly good egg.

The Power Inquiry published its report this week- and it's dynamite. It claims the non-voting masses aren't bored moderates but steaming radicals. It has a string of positive proposals that knock your eye out. Try this lot for size: Members of Parliament at sixteen years of age. Everybody in the House of Lords must be over 40.

Members of the public able to propose laws which the government has to introduce if there's enough support. If two million signatures are collected there has to be a referendum on anything. A Royal Commission on media ownership with Rupert Murdoch especially in mind. There's a lot more of the same. The Power Inquiry isn't half-hearted.

Revolution

When Louis XVl was informed in his private apartments at Versailles of the fall of the Bastille in July 1789, he said to the nobleman who brought the message, "It's a big revolt." The nobleman replied "No Sire. A big revolution."

Stupidly, wickedly, the Commons has been allowed to degenerate into a boring workplace, where ever greater loads of legislation are shovelled through

The Power Inquiry isn't a swift kick up the backside of parliamentary democracy. It's a series of suggestions for having a markedly different system. Forget, for the moment, about 16-year-old MPs or proportional representation, which is another recommendation, just concentrate on the idea that if two million signatures can be collected a referendum must be held.

I can think of a whole series of political corpses that would arise from the grave if that provision was enshrined in law. For sure there would be a referendum on capital punishment for murder and a referendum on leaving the European Union. Very soon you'd find that every deeply contentious and socially divisive issue would be put to the popular vote.

Bear in mind that there's nothing in the least undemocratic about such a system. What could be more democratic than allowing the people to choose everything from tax rates to prison sentences?

But, of course, it wouldn't be parliamentary democracy. We see what it is that has really impressed the Power Inquiry. It's the public distrust of the House of Commons. Lady Kennedy admits as much. She says "The iPod generation wants more power over its politicians. Doing the business once every four years - and your vote not counting very much - now feels very arid to most people."

'Boring workplace'

I make no pretence that I realised that feeling against the House of Commons has risen to such a level. I knew that it was no longer a debating chamber in the old sense. No Enoch Powells or Michael Foots sit on its backbenches and pack the chamber as they speak.

How can more people be motivated to go to the ballot box?

Not having seen something done properly for long enough, people forget it could ever have been done properly in the first place. Stupidly, wickedly, the Commons has been allowed to degenerate into a boring workplace, where ever greater loads of legislation are shovelled through - in sensible working hours of course. I knew that, but I didn't know how many supporters it had lost.

Contrary to what is often stated, it simply isn't true that the British have despised the House of Commons for many years. As a people, we don't like to see our leading citizens glorified, especially if they happen to be politicians.

Cutting the mighty down to size satisfies our sense of liberty. But public opinion hasn't dismissed our political institutions contemptuously, until very recently. It shows in the growing number of people who just won't vote.

I have reservations about constant referendums, but I can't deny that the prevalence of non-voting has become a deep-seated defect in parliamentary democracy.

Legitimacy

In May 1997 when the nation arose to a new dawn, so to speak, just under 72% managed to struggle to the polls, the lowest turnout since 1935. In the general election of 2001 there was the sharpest drop in turnout ever recorded. It collapsed to 59%.

Is this the next direction for democracy?

Prodigious efforts, including a massive increase in postal voting, were made to get the numbers up in 2005, only for a dreadful new benchmark to be recorded. For the first time in history those voting for the winning party were outnumbered by those who didn't vote at all.

If the trend stays like this - and there's no obvious reason why it shouldn't - the system will lack all legitimacy. The present government is in power thanks to the votes of little more than a fifth of the electorate. And think of the authority and intrusion of a modern British government.

This is not a few elderly clerks pushing pens in Whitehall to send dispatches to Hanover. This is a powerful bureaucracy with ever-growing technological skills, that has assumed a mighty embrace on our lives. And says, with obvious sincerity, that to keep us safe, well and happy it needs ever more facts about us and ever more control over our impulses.

Backbench independence

It's all a far cry from the industrial society in which I first canvassed voters careful not to promise them too much lest they disbelieve me. Now the problems lie in giving voters more power over their lives. Partly, of course, this means better representation. The erosion of power from the Commons hasn't gone unnoticed.

Voters have complained too many of their MPs are simply stooges toeing the party line, sometimes ignoring the views of the constituents who put them there. The Power Inquiry actually says the powers of the whips in the House of Commons should be curbed in an obvious attempt to strengthen the independence of backbenchers. I'm not sure that will work but it's a sign of the way the wind is blowing.

I think Lady Kennedy and Ferdy Mount will start the tide moving. I've often been asked what I'd attempt and never replied. Now I will. A very sharp reduction in the patronage available to the Prime Minister; the return of cabinet government with regular lengthy meetings at which detailed notes are taken.

But most of all the system needs to keep getting decisions out of Whitehall and Westminster and into the localities, where the people they affect can make the choices that change their lives.

The whole system of party politics needs reforming. Can anyone think of anything more corrupt than the system of whips where strong-arm tactics and threats are used to persuade MPs to vote against their conscience and the wish of their constituents?
Dave , Hull

It's sad. Low turnout has nothing to do with "voter apathy". It is a function of the fact that voters are anything but apathetic - I for one am angry that no-one represents my views and I have no-one to vote for. If voters are apathetic about anything they are apathetic about the politicians, not politics itself.
Mark Serlin, London

Where is the fire from the politicians? I would like to hear them stand up and shout for what they believe in, not just toe the party line to further their careers. I feel the obsession with spin, and making everything palatable to the electorate has just had the opposite effect and in fact everything is bland.
Simone , Grimsby

I've long been of the opinion that it is not worth voting and indeed at the age of 37 have never seen the inside of a polling booth. Nobody ever convinced me that my vote would make the slightest difference to my day to day existence. Prices continue to rise, laws continue to be passed. The flavours might change, but we're offered the same meat year in year out. .
Richard Gration, Wolverhampton

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