UK General Election 2010: An Outsider on the Inside

I’m in a strange position this election. A dual Australian/British Citizen, currently living in London just a few hundred metres from the houses of Parliament, I get to vote and am surrounded by politics, but it’s all a little foreign.

 

I grew up in a country where voting was compulsory – you get fined if you don’t at least turn up and take a ballot paper, and where voting is preferential – you don’t just vote with a cross, you rank the candidates in the order you like them.

 

As a political junkie, I’ve followed the campaign carefully – watched the TV debates, read the papers, been to each of the parties websites, and even spoken to a couple of candidates. And, in doing so, three things have stood out to me:

 

What about the future? Because it’s such a tight three-way race, and because the country has such an immediate budget challenge, we’re focused on just the next few years. What seems lacking to me – and to many of the younger people I talk to – is what the vision of the parties is for the future of the country.

 

Media matters. I’ve never seen a more partisan media where papers so clearly pick sides and barrack for them to win. It makes me uncomfortable to see the front page of a newspaper trying to make one guy look good, and another look bad. It’s not that the public are stupid and can’t see through this, it’s that they’re surrounded by people telling them what to think, rather than outlining the options, and giving us space to decide what we think.

 

People don’t like politicians. I’m used to people thinking politics is boring – to the apathy and disconnection that many people feel about their elected officials. But, it’s nothing like that here – it’s a deep anger. Now, the Brits aren’t known for showing emotion, but it’s been clear that a lot of people are angry about their politicians – angry about MPs expenses, angry about the state of the economy, angry about feeling like no one is listening to them.

 

All of these add up to a fascinating campaign, and a country that has some serious decisions to make about where it’s heading. I, like so many people, haven’t made up my mind yet, and as I travel around Scotland, the North-West and London in the next few days, I’ll be looking to understand as much as I can about what the future of the country could look like.