When two characters as far apart as Russell Brand and Jeremy Paxman say that politics is failing, when turnout in elections is dismally low, when Prime Minister's Questions is a weekly display of bad standup while government policies on critical issues from wages to energy are a sick joke, it's clear that we need dramatic political change.
Brand's solution is not voting, but a huge majority of the population made that choice with the police and crime commissioner elections, yet the elected reps, with the "mandate" of less than 10 per cent of the voting population are still ploughing on, making decisions, spending money.Not voting has had little impact beyond giving polling staff a really boring day of staring at hall walls and feeding the pens of the nation's cartoonists. And we can expect a repeat in four years' time.
I do understand why many people don't vote, and not just in these farcial elections. They know that they live in a "safe" seat - Tory, Labour or Lib Dem (although a Lib Dem MP did tell me recently that there aren't any of those left) - and that they could go through a lifetime of dutiful voting in council and Westminster elections for one of the three largest parties without ever seeing their candidate of choice elected.
And even those who are broadly happy that they’re seat is red, blue or yellow, increasingly recognise that the party they help elect probably hasn’t formed its policies with them in mind. As targeting has become more and more sophisticated, parties have focused their attention not just on the swing seats, but on particular groups of swing voters in swing seats. Now we're told that in the coming General Election the targeting of voters is going to become even more precise, with specific message for specific types of voters in these seats. Everyone else, the vast majority of the British public, can just vote the way they’re expected to, without any attention or interest from the largest parties.
Our first-past-the-post system has trained voters not to “waste their votes” by voting for their favourite candidate, but to put their cross beside the person/party they dislike the second-most, to stop the one they most dislike getting elected. But wrinkling your nose with distaste in the voting booth as you make your choice isn't a pleasant experience.
Electoral reform would be one answer to this - a House of Lords elected by proportional representation would be a start.Introducing forms of PR in local elections and the General Election would also tackle a lot of issues. But that requires turkeys voting for Christmas, and despite the arrival of our new Green peer, Jenny Jones, in the House of Lords - there with the avowed aim of abolishing it in its current form - it doesn't look like a hopeful short-term prospect.
So it’s back in the hands of voters. What can they do? Staying away will just leave those who are always going to vote - because of habit, because of a sense of duty or belief that that's a sign of respectability - deciding who is in Westminster and in local councils. As a powerful letter in the Guardian points out - that could have results that most people with any kind of progressive world view would find disastrous.
So I have a radical suggestion: vote for the person or the policies that you believe in.
That means ignoring the two-horse race script, recognising it’s in your hands to change it, and that Brand and Paxman have a powerful point: there is no point in making a choice between two near-identical clapped-out nags with jockeys wearing identical uniforms distinguished only by their colours.
You as a voter could start this experiment in the European elections next year.The chances of your vote being “wasted” are much lower - this is our one UK proportional representation election, so in most of the regions parties need only around 10 per cent of the vote to get a seat.
Yes, this is a plea for something that would be in the interests of the Green Party. I know that the Vote for Policies website shows that, stripped of branding, our 2010 manifesto was the most popular, that our policies of bringing the railways back into public hands, maintaining and restoring our publicly owned and publicly run NHS, making the minimum wage a living wage have overwhelming public support.
But it's also a plea for a peaceful, utterly democratic, in Brand's terms revolutionary, transformation of British politics.
Voting for what you believe in, for the person you trust and respect, who genuinely listens to and represents you. That could be our democracy.