Are they really all the same?

TONY Blair has fired the starters' gun at last, and the 'phoney election' is over. May 5 is to be the date of the General Election (as we all knew anyway). From today, you can expect the real campaigning to start.

It may well prove to be vicious. Labour are odds-on favourites to win. But a clutch of opinion polls yesterday showed the Tories narrowing the gap. Three polls gave Labour only a slender lead, and a fourth - based on the views of people who said they were "absolutely certain" to vote - put the Conservatives five points ahead.

To add to Labour's discomfort, the party's parliamentary candidate for the Ribble Valley, Stephen Wilkinson, chose yesterday to publicly defect to the Liberal Democrats, branding Labour "increasingly authoritarian" and accusing it of failing to protect civil liberties.

The real problem for politicians in this election, however, may well be trying to get anybody to care. A new report, also released yesterday, claimed that voter apathy was set to reach record levels this time around - mainly because people are fed up with spin.

The poll of 3,000 people surveyed by pie and pasty manufacturers Ginsters revealed that one in four of them may simply not bother to vote - rising to one in three among those aged between 25 and 34.

Two thirds of those who said they may not be voting gave the main reason as being that they did not trust politicians. A similar proportion believed election manifestos were based on fiction not fact.

Prime Minister Tony Blair came out of the survey particularly badly, with only 14 per cent of those polled believing him to be honest. But there was little comfort for any of his rivals. Politicians as a profession were named by those surveyed as the nation's biggest liars - ahead of estate agents and car salesmen.

Our political masters clearly have a lot of work to do if they are to engage with us, the voters, and persuade us it is worth making the trip to the polling booth on May 5.

o Is it worth voting?

YES, says Rosie Wall, chairperson of the Chapelfields Residents Association.

I think it is very important to vote. It is a privilege to be able to vote for what you think is best for your country, and one that was earned the hard way.

We fought the war for the freedom to speak out on things, so it is important that we do. Politics is relevant to everybody: and voting is the one real chance that many people have to influence things.

Politicians should be doing more to explain themselves to the younger generation in terms that young people can understand. It is dangerous voting if you don't know what you are voting for, and some of the leaflets and other election information politicians put out are not going to help younger people.

Older people have more of a grasp of what politics is about. Younger people sometimes can't understand that it is not just about why they haven't got a football field, but about things that affect every part of their lives, from young people up to pensions and what you think is the right way for your country to be run.

In our family, we have always sat down and talked and tried to explain the reasons why you need to vote. I can remember when I was young, telling my brother: 'I'm going to vote!' and he said: "Who are you going to vote for?" I said: "I'm going to shut my eyes, and wherever my pencil lands I will vote for them." Then he sat me down and gave me half an hour's talking to about why you don't do things like that. He explained to me why you need to look at what politicians are going to do for you and decide what you think is best, not just for yourself but for your country. It made me feel stupid.

So yes, I always vote. I think, because we have been given the privilege of doing so, we should use it.

NO, says Acomb builder Rob Graham, 23.

I HAVE never voted, because as I have grown up I have not found an interest in politics.

It is not because I'm apathetic. I just don't feel political information is aimed at the younger generation in the way it should be, and so I don't feel I know enough about the issues to be able to vote.

There are a lot of people like me. It is just something that the younger generation aren't interested in.

Politics obviously does affect our lives, but I would not be able to tell you what each party stands for. I know who the main parties are, but I would not be able to tell you their intentions and proposals.

How do you find these things out?

I know they have these five-minute broadcasts on TV, but they are more like advertising. They try to package everything up so it is like advertising, and I don't think politicians are being honest enough.

They are simply trying to score points off each-other. You have all these promises about what they are going to do, and then nothing comes of it.

What's the point of voting if nothing ever comes of it?

I feel they are aiming at older people and people in wealthy jobs more than the younger generation. I don't get the feeling that any of them are catering for us. I have never once met a politician, not even a local one.

Maybe if they came to knock on the door, or went out on the street more to talk to people, that would persuade me to vote - if I had a chance to talk to them and find out who they really are and what they stand for.

But just watching them on TV: no. You can't really learn anything about them just by doing that.

o Ryedale farmer and Liberal parliamentary candidate John Clark calls for a return to the politics of listening.

I HAVE always said people are not apathetic about politics. It is an insult to them to say that. They are cross. They are fed up with politicians who fire things at them through the TV, through newspapers, but who don't listen to what they have to say.

There is little discussion these days between politicians and the public. Doorstep canvassing has virtually died out. If you ask people 'when were you last consulted by a politician?' the answer is likely to be ten years ago.

That's because doorstep canvassing is bloody hard work. It is much easier for politicians to use mass communication - to sit in a TV or radio studio and communicate with millions of people at once. The problem is that none of those millions of people can talk back to them. It is all one-way communication.

As a result, people's needs have fallen off the end of the scale. People not only feel they aren't being listened to: they really aren't being listened to. If politicians aren't talking to people on the doorstep, how can they be hearing what they are saying?

The further up the political tree you get, the more you are surrounded by advisers saying this and that. This background noise is so loud senior politicians have no hope of hearing what people want. Instead it becomes a question of what they think will be popular - and because of that, no politician is prepared to stand up and say this is what we really think we ought to do. Nobody is saying pensions should be returned to the levels they were in the 1980s, for example, because it would cost.

I don't believe, however, that people aren't voting because they can't be bothered going to the polling stations to vote.

All the evidence I have got from talking to people during the last couple of years is quite the reverse.

They are gasping for politicians to genuinely communicate with them. If there were ballot papers with a space at the bottom saying: 'None of the above candidates, because I am disillusioned' there would be a big turnout.

People would certainly be bothered to go along and vote to show their feelings. But if politicians cannot even be bothered to get themselves to people's doorsteps to ask for their views, why should members of the public go to the polling station to vote for them?

Updated: 09:24 Wednesday, April 06, 2005