The Spectator’s Notes | 6 May 2006

As I write, no one knows what the result of the local elections will be, but it seems safe to predict that the turnout will not be high. Politically minded people tend to worry about low turnout because they find it hard to understand that someone might just not care very much who represents him or her in Parliament or council. Yet, in a reasonably well-run society, it is rational to conclude that it doesn’t greatly matter who wins, and leave it at that. The right to vote, which is essential, only translates into a duty to vote in extreme circumstances (hence the traditionally high turnout in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, when the balance between unionist and nationalist could be tipped either way). Now the Blairite think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research points out that those who do not vote tend to be young and poor and members of ethnic minorities, and that their abstention therefore perpetuates their ‘exclusion’. The IPPR may be right that large groups feel that voting is pointless, but its solution — compulsory turnout, with fines for those failing to do so — is gloriously producer-led. Just like the political parties who say that they must have state funding because otherwise they will accept private money corruptly, the compulsory turnout people do not consider that the conduct of the political class might have something to do with the problem itself. Political participation should result from persuasion, not compulsion. At present, our parties are not very persuasive. That’s their fault, not ours. Ah, says the IPPR, but it’s compulsory in Belgium. Quite.

One of the many indignities which a politician has to endure when caught in adultery is that fictions get mixed with the fact. Once the press is confident of the fact, it also knows that he has no redress.