Hamish Champ: Political apathy could rule, sadly

By Hamish Champ

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Elections Democracy

One's dotage, looming on the horizon like a massive police road block, shouldn't necessarily see the dulling of one's political idealism, but I am...

One's dotage, looming on the horizon like a massive police road block, shouldn't necessarily see the dulling of one's political idealism, but I am finding it harder to get excited about politics as I get older.

In a week when the Tories hold their party conference I'll be listening out for their take on the major political issues, but I doubt I'll agree with much of what they come up with. I'll also be keeping an ear out for any words of support for the pub trade. On this too I fear I will be straining my ears in vain.

David Cameron's former connections with the bar trade - if you'll recall he was on the board of Tiger Tiger operator Urbium, now Novus Leisure, until 2005 - will probably count for nought. In an environment that is becoming increasingly hostile to pubs and alcohol he'll be too mindful of electorally-damaging headlines in the Daily Mail​ and the like to stick his neck out and offer anything tangible.

It's not just Dave and his Blue Army either. Last week we had Gordon Brown aiming pot-shots at the country's licensing hours, a bizarre piece of political theatre, since he was effectively lambasting a regime his own government enabled.

As an until-recently life-long and die-hard Labour supporter I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at Brown's keynote speech in Brighton. The list of things he was going to fix was impressive enough, but as he rolled out the usual promises about saving the NHS, education, stamping out anti-social behaviour among the young and so on I was half expecting him to say that he will also make it his mission to find Little Green Men on the Moon or unearth fairies at the bottom of my garden. He might as well have done for all the difference it will make to his political prospects next year.

Which begs a question I will have to face up to in a few months when the Prime Minister finally calls a general election: who the bloody hell do I vote for?

Universal suffrage is something for which tens of thousands of people have died over the centuries, but when push comes to shove I could well be tempted to do what I did last time round, namely not bother.

I felt bad about not appending my mark on a ballot paper in 2005. True, I could have registered a protest vote by scribbling something profound and meaningful across the list of people, who by their presence on said list were claiming they wanted to represent my views in the Mother of Parliaments - though I suspect perhaps the words 'gravy' and 'train' might have been more apt.

But I didn't even do that. Instead I abstained from voting for the first time in my life. I just couldn't bring myself to vote for any​ of them.

I suspect my own apathy, born of watching the democratic process being eroded before my eyes in recent decades, is shared by many.

And this is the bit I feel really guilty about; politics affects us all, but I've been sucked into being bored by it. I don't feel I can make a difference anymore. And I desperately want to.

But faced with what awaits us from either of the 'leading' political parties, the way that the lines have been blurred to the extent they have, I fear that my crossing the threshold of my local polling station next Spring will be merely to assert my democratic right by 'spoiling' my ballot paper. A sorry state of affairs and no mistake...

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