6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.1

Reason 1: The Internet

For once I feel I have a voice either via this blog or through Twitter. I have been interested in politics from the first time I heard my mum and dad calling to each other as another result was announced by the BBC Home Service. My parents were Conservatives and I now know that this was the 1951 election which brought Churchill back into power after the post-war Labour landslide had rejected his party's policies despite his wartime leadership.

Once the results came out on election night TV the whole process became much more dramatic and so by the 1964 election when it looked clear that the old grouse moor Tories would be bowing out the true election night tradition for me began. I had access to a TV! Where the Internet makes everything so much better is that if you have the time to spare you can track the election debate from start to finish. For those who have never engaged with the political process, especially those young people who feel elections will not make any difference to them, there is a chance that the Internet might just draw them in. There is certainly no lack of comment, from the comic through to the serious world of the political analyst, whether dealing with voting projections or the stature of the party leaders. The statistics for Twitter alone show how many go in for re-active TV viewing.

There will be those who say that the Leadership Debates have changed the election campaign into a sort of Pop Idol event to the exclusion of the traditional hustings and interviews. At the moment I see no signs that the latter will come to an end. What I do see is the possibility of previously disillusioned voters engaging with these new electioneering methods. Whether the leaders will agree to such debates again remains to be seen but with the arrival of the Internet, television is only one part of the democratic process . The Internet will have an increasingly important role if computer literate youngsters become convinced that an election can lead to improvements in their lives, rather than waste, ineffectiveness and broken promises. This is crucial because an election with few voters is meaningless and there are elites who would be very pleased to fill the vacuum thereby created. In five years time who knows where the Internet Election will be.Such speculations should make it interesting and intellectually enjoyable. To those who say that nothing changes I answer, 'Yes it does, and often for the worse. If you don't vote you can't complain, and one day it could have serious consequences if you did complain.' There is no benign circuit hard wired into our political institutions. I am therefore enjoying this election because it means so much for the future of democracy in the UK.

Dacier

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