ANOTHER WALKOVER!

The horse racing world has a term to describe our local election contest—a “walkover,” where the result is a foregone conclusion.

Tameside went to the polls last Thursday and, even before the official count, (which took an extraordinary amount of time to be announced) most of us who take an interest in local matters, knew that the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Therefore, even with the upsurge of UKIP and the despite the gallant efforts of a few ‘independents’ the results came as no surprise.

However, the result can hardly be considered a resounding vote of confidence for those career councillors who’re still languishing safely aboard the council gravy-train.

The lack of fervent debate together with a politically constrained, democratically challenged election method has once again led to a record low turnout of 31.97 per cent of Tameside voters, who were presumably weighed down by the depressing certainty, that however they cast their ballots, public services will continue to be delivered by a cross section of hard-working, underpaid civil servants supplemented by facilities management staff who are under the yoke of a cabal of overpaid bureaucrats whose guidance and control still remains firmly wrapped in local government ‘red-tape’  and with the political priorities of such services resting in the hands of several incompetents’, more than a few narcissists and the odd petty tyrant.

Here are the round numbers of non-voters; out of Tameside’s 220,000 population; 20 per cent weren’t eligible to vote and 50 per cent stayed home. The remaining 30 per cent who took part in the circus, about half of those (15 per cent of the whole,) voted for Labour, who then claimed the right to govern all 100 per cent of us for the next 4 years; only in the fairyland of democratic theory can this be called "majority rule" by our career councillors.

The council’s own published figures for last Thursday’s local government election bore this out.

Out of a total of 172,479 people who were registered to cast their vote in Tameside, 117,324 chose not only to not vote for a Labour candidate! But, showed that they were not receptive to any political message whatsoever! 

Those numbers can hardly be described as support for Tameside council’s method of seeking the “public will”

And as for the council leader now claiming an overwhelming mandate to proceed with his preposterous plans, the figures get dramatically worse!

In total, only 26,666 residents voted Labour candidates into office, which means that 145,813 Tameside residents didn't!

But now it’s all over, at least until 2015 when the next round of pseudo local elections take place; if we are ever to regain some semblance of a level electoral playing field, the questions we must ask are - Why did all those people abstain? What can be done to encourage more to turn out and restore some appearance of democracy?

Because the main consequence of low voter turnout is that the true will of the people is not and never will be heard.

Not until we get the voting turnout way above 50% - 60% will this happen!

I firmly believe therefore, that the time is now right for 'the people' to consider a form of ‘compulsory’ voting!

By that, I don’t envisage actually forcing people to vote, but rather that those eligible should be required to participate in the process of an election.