Issue 5: Election Edition

The European & Local Elections: Evaluated

At the Women & Europe Conference on 12th May 2014

I recently attended a conference on 'Women & Europe,' run by members of the Fabian Society, in which it was expressed that people needed to be educated on voting. This was also a sentiment I myself had continuously promoted: that we need to do more to educate our people about Politics and Voting, due to a rapidly decreasing number of people actually turning up to vote every election year. 

So, it took me as a bit of a surprise that nothing was actually being done to ensure elections made front-page news, or dominated the headlines on news channels, ahead of the local & European elections on Thursday. Nor did I see many party election broadcasts being made by our political parties. There was the odd one occasionally, but that is evidently not enough. There needs to be a change in our national political culture, rather a creation of one. People need to be told that the reason politics is so crucially important is that it directly affects them. 

A few of my colleagues had returned to the office from a conference in Sweden where they were constantly being asked their views and opinions of electoral candidates and parties by French, German, Swedish, and various other nationalities attending the conference. They knew of all our candidates, what their political agenda was, the policies they were promising, and, furthermore, they were excited about the elections. My colleagues were stunned to see the passion for British politics in non-British nationals, which is rarely seen in our own citizens. Why is it that our general public consensus regarding politics is that it is 'boring' and that all 'politicians are liars who can't be trusted, so why vote anyway.' Had our ancestors had that sentiment, democracy would never have seen the light of day. We are lucky to have democratic rights, the right to have our say, and not be dictated by policy makers or the government.  Our vote is our power; we are in control of our nation's future, not the government. It is our duty to do our homework and learn about our prospective governing candidates to ensure our government represents our interests and is listening to us. 

We must educate people on Politics and the importance of voting, and we must instil a profound British political culture in our citizens from an early age.