So after weeks of mud-slinging, swearing and not much policy
propositioning, London finally came to the somewhat unsurprising conclusion
that it would keep Boris Johnson as mayor for a further four years. But this is
far and away the least interesting thing to take away from the election. In the
aftermath of an election which focussed on personality more than ever, the two
lessons to be learnt from are the problems surrounding broadcasting rules and
the even greater ones surrounding voter apathy.
As the battle got bloodier between Ken and Boris,
unsurprisingly Londoners began to look for other options, only to discover that
there weren’t any. Or so it would seem from media coverage. The televised
debates refused to put any other candidates than the four main ones (Boris,
Ken, Brian Paddick (Lib Dems), Jenny Jones (Green)). This ignorance of the
three other candidates on the polling slip was impossibly frustrating.
Independent candidate Siobhan Benita’s, who eventually stormed into 5th
place with over 80,000 first preference votes, annoyance was evident from her
Twitter. IN an increasingly media savvy age, most voters find out about
candidates through the newspapers, radio and television. How can we live in a “democracy”
with a fair voting system when there is nowhere near an even spread of time
between all the candidates, particularly on the BBC? There was a cruel irony to
the fact that as the candidates got up to do the speeches one by one after the
results, the BBC cut away from them after the main 4 ( the same 4 they had
given air time for) had spoken, just as Benita opened her mouth. It’s time for
a change to allow more diverse candidates to step up to the challenge of taking
on the main parties, and our media should be supporting that.
The second shocking thing to take away from the election was
the astonishingly low turnout of 38%. This can be attributed to everything from
disillusionment with party politics to the fact that it was raining on Thursday
but the fact is Boris Johnson has been elected mayor of a city with almost 8
million inhabitants, with only 17% of their support. The London mayoral
election is one of the more confusing ones, with voters being asked to make two
preference votes along with voting for councillors and the GLA. But aside from
that clearly we need to find a solution to the political apathy which is
plaguing the UK and again destroying democracy. Whether it is electronic
voting, compulsory voting or lowering the voting age in order to politicise
younger people, something must be done. Politicians can no longer sweep the
issue of low turnout under the carpet and I hope somewhere out there the
coalition are thinking of ways to tackle it now. Somehow I doubt it.
In many ways the London mayoral election was an absolute
farce. The loss of two ballot boxes delayed the result for almost four hours
until eventually at almost midnight it was announced, to a resounding “meh”
from the majority of London. Britain: doing democracy right.
