Equality by lot

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in the UK has some new data about the opinions of the UK citizens about their government. The findings, showing low levels of satisfaction and trust in the system, are not surprising, but useful in giving some details and in showing that no significant change in the general negative sentiment has taken place.

Contrary to the supposed polarization, there exist a wide consensus regarding the oligarchical nature of the system. UK citizens across the political spectrum see the voters as having little influence compared to party donors, business, media and lobbyists. There is also a widespread agreement that politicians “do not understand the lives” of typical people and that “democracy in Britain does not serve [their] interests”.

The report also has an interesting table showing that young people and poor people do not vote and a graph showing that UK voters are increasingly prone to changing who they vote for.

Finally, the report has some recommendations. Those unfortunately are not very useful and are made of meaningless exhortations such as

[r]eforms should look to strengthen links between political parties and civil society as well as improving the representativeness of political elites[,]

[r]eforms to increase the sway of citizens over public policy are much needed. As are reforms to better respect the voices of all citizens[,]

and of what appears to be a call to devolve power to regional and local government. The latter idea, to the extent that it is at all feasible, is not likely to make any significant change, and represents no more than some superficial reaction against the oligarchical status quo.

Filed under: Elections, Opinion polling, Proposals |