Do People Care Sufficiently About Politics To Vote?

Now polls are suggesting a hung Parliament

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100131/tuk-uk-britain-polls-fa6b408.html

BUT read this from Guido Fawkes

When Brown has gone after the election it seems inevitable that we will eventually have a Khrushchev moment, where a senior Labour figure articulates what everyone knows.  It will be devastating.  Gordon Brown is a malevolent, deeply damaged and unpleasant human being.  He is at the centre of a culture of political bullying that has been unhealthy for the Labour Party and the government.  The loyalist cabal around him are unpleasant people who have no place in a healthy political culture, they are as secretive and malicious as they are vindictive and vicious.

If British citizens stay away from the ballot box, it's not because they can't be bothered to track down to the polling booth; it's because they see parties and politicians as "all as bad as each other" and feel powerless to do anything about it. They want their voice heard.

If anything, the coming election will be fought against an even more toxic background of anger and distrust stoked by the twin scandals of MPs' expenses and the banking crisis.

Trapped in the Westminster village, politicians and journalists fail to appreciate the massive gulf that's opened up between their activities and the hopes and fears of ordinary voters.

Given the opportunity, people do care a great deal about politics and are prepared to put a lot of effort into debate  Power2010 blog

With politics at such a low ebb, where is the change we so desperately need going to come from?

Baroness Kennedy

Comment

In Australia voting in a General Election is mandatory and everybody is obliged to vote. Thus the government is truly representative of the will of the people and nobody is allowed to abstain. In Britain the fact that so many abstain means that only approximately 60% of the electorate vote, and in a European election the number falls to around 40%.