Being the very model of a modern Labour minister, when Margaret Hodge wanted to
find out why the turnout in
her Barking constituency in
last year’s general election was only 45 percent, she hired a polling company
and ran focus groups. The problem, her research concluded, was not apathy, but alienation. People were passionate and angry about issues but believed that the politicians weren’t listening.
I went to Barking, in east London, to do a piece on Margaret’s survey for BBC London’s political programme, MetroPol, and got the same answers from young people I interviewed in the town centre. It was startling to hear how hostile many of them were to politicians and the whole political process. During the same week, I chaired a debate of 30 or so teenagers in Watford. Many of them said they only turned up for the debate because they were bribed with £10 gift vouchers by the organisers.
One reform many of the fourteen, fifteen and sixteen year-olds were agreed on, however, was that the voting age should be lowered from eighteen to sixteen. You’re old enough to get married at sixteen and, if you leave school and get a job, pay taxes, so why can’t you vote, they argued. Stephen Judson, an official from the Election Commission who was on the panel, confirmed that it’s on the agenda. It would certainly make politicians think harder about persuading younger people to vote.
My visits to Barking and Watford also taught me a bit about what politicians think about re-engaging young people with politics and the democratic process. When I interviewed Margaret Hodge in her constituency, she suggested ideas like exit polls when people use public services, citizens’ juries, surveys and questionnaires to involve people in the way their lives are governed.
In Watford, however, unsuccessful Labour mayoral candidate Vince Muspratt, who was also on the panel, accused his teenage audience of whinging! Not the cleverest way of engaging young people with politics and politicians.
Before the May local elections, BBC London staged a live debate in a Brixton pub on why so few people bother to vote when it comes to choosing who runs their town hall. When we talk about stay-at-home voters, we’re talking mainly about eighteen to 24-year olds. This is the group that would rather vote in Big Brother, for Will or Gareth in Pop Idol, or perhaps take part in a poll on whether Sven Goran Eriksson should choose Nancy or Ulrika. So the low turnout crisis is mainly an age thing. But is it also a class thing? The lowest turnouts in last year’s general elections, in London and elsewhere, were in the poorest constituencies, with the glaring exception of Kensington and Chelsea.
As if turnouts aren’t bad enough, our pub debate revealed that some people actually try to persuade people not to bother. One of our guests, Dave Austin from Epping, leafleted his local area during the general election last year trying to encourage people not to vote. None of the parties is worth voting for, he said.
But other people complained that the reason they don’t vote is because politicians don’t answer their questions. Some complained that canvassers don’t bother knocking at their door. Mike Slocombe, who runs the Urban 75 website, said people just don’t trust politicians. He’s right about that, of course.
But should the media play a role in re-engaging young people with politics and the democratic process? Well, I think we already do our best. Those of us who report politics, whether it’s for newspapers or TV and radio (and I’ve done both), always try to make it as sexy and fun as we can for as big a readership or audience as possible.
But at the end of the day, we’re only the messengers here. If the politicians aren’t listening, as Margaret Hodge’s focus groups told her, or they call young people whingers, as Vince Muspratt did during a debate he knew was going to be broadcast on TV, then that’s not our fault.
The job of re-engaging young people is primarily one for the politicians, not the media. When I worked in newspapers I used to say to politicians: ‘Unlike you, we fight a general election every day, when we compete with our rivals for readers.’ As broadcasters, we compete with each other daily as well.
If the politicians can be bothered to get off their backsides and re-engage young people, we can help them. If they make politics sexy, we’ll give them plenty of column inches and airtime. We’d be delighted. So lower the voting age to sixteen and examine new ideas like citizens’ juries. But please don’t, for heaven’s sake, call young people whingers.