.......AND SO SAY MOST OF US..

Thursday`s elections for the first ever Police and Crime Commissioners have thrown up some interesting issues.   I suppose the first is the small `turnout` of voters, averaging about 15-18% with at least one Polling Station attracting absolutely no voters at all.   

Now the politicians who dreamt up this crackpot event are quick to insist that those who have been `elected` do have a legitimate democratic mandate for office.   Well, I guess they would say that wouldn`t they?   Despite their insistence on at least 50% turnouts for Union strike ballots.  But the reality seems to be that the electorate were not necessarily put off by the dank November weather or even by some widespread ignorance about the candidates;  but more by their innate belief that politics should play no part in running a police force.   

That may, of course, be a naive notion, since the Police Authorities, who have had the job until now, have comprised majority membership based on party political nominees from local authorities.   But it seems the blatant politicisation involved with these elections has caused genuine resentment, so much so that the low turnout can largely be seen as a pretty hefty backlash against what was felt to be a misguided attempt to foist an unpopular idea onto an unwilling electorate.

To that extent, therefore, the vast majority who declined to cast their votes actually turned their supposed indifference into a considerable political statement of itself.   So bully for them.

I suppose the `review` by the Electoral Commission into what went wrong might again suggest, however timidly, that the experience of these elections might result in compulsory voting being put back on the agenda.   If so, I won`t have a problem with that, provided there is always an option to vote for `None of the Above.`   This is not to be flippant about the important democratic right to vote but simply to reflect that democracy itself must surely allow voters, who are not enamoured with any of the candidates or any of the policies they espouse, to have the option of rejecting them all and making a statement to that effect on the ballot paper.   Seems fair enough?   But for all of that, any future voting arrangement that will prevent the John Prescotts of this world being elected to anything ever again, gets my vote.

Another `claim` made by the Coalition Government was that the new Commissioners would in effect be a much cheaper option than the Police Authorities.   However, they overlook the probability that the Commissioners will require support, accommodation and all the usual trappings of `office.`   Moreover.....and this is where the whole thing descends into farce.....the Commissioners, whose job it will be to `oversee` the Chief Constables, will themselves be overseen by non-elected appointees who will make up the Police and Crime Panels who will themselves doubtless require some kind of `support.`  

So the whole thing is of doubtful democratic value, unlikely to be of economic benefit (especially after the £100million cost of the elections) and has succeeded only in alienating the majority of the electorate.   Apart from that, it was a beezer wheeze.