Politician say – or felt obliged to say – that the parties need to engage with The Public. I came across a novel argument that postulated the opposite: politicians’ desire to ingratiate themselves with the electorate results in them being degraded in the public eye and people are turned off the process altogether.

Because I’m not a politician, I feel free to blame the public to some extent. For intance, before the election, an ICM/Guardian poll showed a higher figure for peole claiming their MP wasn’t doing a good job than people who actually knew who their MP was! In other words, there’s a whole lot of people saying, in effect, “Dunno who my MP is – but he/she’s doing a crap job anyway”.