If the general public are not taught in schools, and do not make full use of the other sources of intellectually rich media, how do they get their general information about the government, information on the different parties, and how do they decide who to vote for? There are three types of media which bring the majority of the country their information about the government which are known as the mass media, and comprise of the Tabloids, broadsheets, and TV.
The Tabloids
The newspapers such as ‘The Sun’, ‘The Mirror’, and ‘The News of The World’, are commonly and collectively known as the tabloids, and are the countries main source of political news and review, as they sell millions of copies everyday and reach a lot more people than any other source. However the fact that they reach so many people is not always a good thing, as the type of articles that is presented in the tabloid press is rarely positive towards politics, and frequently about the scandalous, and sometimes illegal behaviour of an MP, a high court judge, or someone else of that nature, putting a very negative slant on the British government, because that is what sells the papers, and from a businessman’s point of view, that is the bottom line. Newspapers like those mentioned above do not have the same kinds of rules as an institution like the BBC which has to be impartial with any stories which it covers, and any information which is presented to the nation, and therefore can be totally one sided, giving absolutely anything a negative spin if they so wish, and it is also worth noting that most newspaper have an editorial political bias, which means that they are more likely to emphasise scandals which involve the opposing party. The only real restraints that they have are ethics committees, and the Laws involved with slander and propaganda, presenting false information to sway the views of people. I’ve talked about the Tabloids in some detail; however there are obviously other newspapers which are designed to bring information to the people about the happenings of parliament which are more respectfully known as the broadsheets.
The Broadsheets
These are the newspapers more commonly read by those who are usually better educated and middle class, newspapers such as ‘The Times’, ‘The Telegraph’, and ‘The Guardian’, and their readers are considered to usually be more trusting of what is written, than those who read tabloid press, and are generally presumed to have a better understanding about politics (Budge, 2007). The readers of the broadsheets are proven, by certain surveys conducted by an Audit Bureau, to gain the majority of their political information from the newspaper, as opposed to the Tabloid readers, who are also confirmed, by the same audit to watch more TV, and to make political decisions through watching TV, and what is even more interesting, is the fact that the tabloid newspapers outsell the broadsheets by more than 3 to 1, meaning that the main source of political information is in fact the Television.
Television
Budge et al, created the table below, which shows the results of a survey conducted in 2003 by Ofcom, the government ‘Office of Communications’ Entitled: The main sources of political information, 2003 (%)
Source: Ofcom, the Public’s View Survey Results, 2004
These results show the absolute importance for politicians to feature in the media, TV in particular, however the fact that the media reaches so many potential voters, and supplies them with the knowledge they need to make their decisions is not always a good thing, as many politicians have found out to their peril, when the media latched on to a negative aspect of a certain politicians life. Whether it’s their private life, or their professional life, every politician is under constant scrutiny by the media, and has to be extremely careful with both in order to avoid public humiliation, and risk losing public confidence for both themselves and for the party that they stand for. However what the media tends to focus on is exactly what the politicians are trying to avoid, because that’s what keeps the public interested.
Is the negative media justified, and is it doing a good job?
Although the amount of negative press that the government, and specific MPs in general get is noticeably high, the question as to whether they deserve it to be publicized in this way is very relevant. The answer is almost certainly yes, as the people deserve to know the facts about the people who their taxes are paying for, just as the people deserve to know about those who commit crimes, and those who commit benefit fraud in particular, which is another big paper seller. The media takes the view that if the officials decide to act in this way on the public’s money, then the public have the right to know, but this utter bombardment of reports into sex scandals, money for honours, and more recently the abuse of expenses, could be considered to be the main cause of the loss in faith.
However, even though the media does exploit politicians on a regular basis, it has to be said that they only print stories which are backed up by facts and figures, and cannot simply make up stories based on rumours, which the American press seems to do quite frequently. This is mainly down to the legal system, but either way it gives the media a sense of brutal honesty and an air of trust to those who read, listen, or watch what is being said. In this respect, the media is doing a very good job in keeping the people up to date with the day to day behaviour of our governors, as when one politician is singled out for a certain piece of corruption, all the other MPs are usually investigated in more detail in order to bring any other perpetrators out into the open.
An example of this is the very recent events surrounding the actions of Mr Derek Conway, a Conservative MP, who was shamed for allegedly employing his two sons, one of which was at University, despite evidence of any actual work being completed. Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor of the Telegraph found that since this affair has been brought to light, more than 150 MPs also admitted to employing family on the tax-payers money, and 50 of them have also sacked staff, which indicates that they too may have been employing family without any evidence of any work being carried out. This subject was one of huge national importance which sparked a lot of criticism by the public over what the government officials are actually doing with our money. BBC Radio 4s programme, Today in parliament, researched this further and found that the Standards and Privileges committee has now taken action in order to ensure that the problem of MPs paying staff does not happen again by introducing new guidelines which all MPs will be forced to comply with by August 2008, Sir George Young, the committees chairman, warned of severe consequences if these new rules were not followed. From this August the names, jobs, and family relationships to the MP must be logged in the register of family interests, in order for any future employment of family. Also any MPs who wish to employ family members must justify why that person is correct for the job by explaining how they are qualified, and how the public costs are reasonable. The chairman stated that these new regulations are an important step to rebuild public confidence in Parliament, as well as the importance of showing those who have lost faith, that the government can listen to and act on issues in a very short space of time. The sudden change in the way that MPs will have to conduct their business caused an outcry of mixed emotions by many politicians, some of whom tried to oppose the decision, however a voluntary scheme has been almost immediately introduced, coming into effect on the 1st of April 2008, which is certainly a positive step in the right direction, providing the MPs don’t think that these plans to monitor and restrict their expenses account isn’t just some elaborate April fools prank.
What other issues may affect the loss of faith?
Apart from the lack of education about the subject of UK government, and the scandalous behaviour which features so frequently in the media, what other issues can be blamed for the reduction in interest? Another theory is that the sheer amount of legislation that is passed through parliament each year is not only getting rather tiresome, but is just not working in the way that it should, and it seems that the rushed decisions which are allowed to be pushed through so quickly, mainly because of the ‘organic’ constitution that we live by, are not always seen to be answers to the very troubles that the government set out to achieve in the first place. Radio 4 interviewed Harriet Harman, Leader of the House of Commons, on Friday the 28th March 2008, after she recently put an idea forward that would try to combat this topic of concern, post legislative scrutiny, suggesting that the department responsible for the legislation in the outset were then appointed to look back at legislation which had been passed three to five years previously, create a memorandum, and to make checks on whether it was working in the was that parliament had intended, checking any negative points about them, and gaining positive results if possible to silence any criticisms that may have been brought to light since the laws had been made operational. She recognises that the public are getting tired of the amount of new laws which don’t seem to be working in the way that they should and has designed this plan of action to remedy this. However there were two quite valid points raised in the interview which forced some interesting answers. The first was that the re-raising the issues of the original cause of concern might spark up the emotions and debate that were prominent when the act was passed, the interviewer used the example of fox-hunting, which was banned in 2003, to which the deputy leader of the labour party responded by assuring that this idea of scrutinising the acts was not to revive the original debate or to discovers whether the act was right or wrong, but to check whether or not it has remedied the issues which it was designed to resolve. The next point that she was questioned about was the ability of the select committees who will have to look at all the old legislations and memorandums produced by the relevant departments, as well as trying to keep up with all the new legislation thrown at them, basically asking whether she thinks that they have time to do everything twice. She once again had a reasonable argument for this question also, stating that the committees will be able to choose which acts they wish to pursue, and if a certain act seems to be working then there is little reason to scrutinize it.
Her proposal seems to be a good solution at first; however when I started to think about the answers that she’d given in more detail I began to wonder. If the scrutinizing of the acts is not with the view to change them, but just to see if they are working or not, then why do it at all? Perhaps she was avoiding the issue with a hasty argument, because it appears ludicrous to waste all that extra time and money to re-examine the bills if no action will be taken to amend them. However I did also consider another theory, that this whole idea is simply another rushed decision by a politician in yet another attempt to win the attention and interest of the public again. This subject also remains to be seen.
How do the negative factors mentioned affect politics?
Well the obvious effects seen by these problems are the votes given to each political party when a general election is called, which decides who remains or becomes the executive of the country, and by how many seats, giving an indication of exactly how safe their position is. However a much more worrying problem that these issues affect is the election turnout, which is basically the percentage of the people who have the right to vote that actually use their vote. Below is a table created by a parliament department, with some staggering results that illustrate the changes to the voter turnout for general elections from 1945-2005.
Source: House of Commons research Paper 2005
As you can see from the table of raw data, the turnout for the 2001 general election hit its lowest point for 60 years, dropping 12% from the previous election in 1997, which saw Tony Blair revoke John Major of his political power, and bring New Labour into the government as its executive. We have looked at a few possible causes for the recent decline of interest in politics, however there are many other theories as to why we have seen this negative trend, some statistical analysts, for example, believe that around about 70% of the variation of the past 60 years can be explained by an equation:
Turnout = 79.8% - (0.39 x Lead) + (0.12 x Distance) – (0.22 x Years from 1945)
This equation incorporates three different factors including the amount of time that has passed since World War II, the lead of the winning political party, and also the distance between the parties (Budge, 2007). The issue about the World War is a very relevant theory as the younger people that have superseded the older generations, especially those who had to fight for our right to democracy, don’t seem to appreciate the privileged position that we are now in, which however is understandable as the younger generation do not have first hand experience to back up the facts that they are taught. The table also shows a slight upturn in the turnout in the most recent general election of 2005, which is said to be a result of the difference between the positions of the parties, which affects the equation that we mentioned earlier used by statistical analysts. However if we use the equation as it is intended, the results show that the turnout for the 2005 election should have been around 67.5% if the equation worked perfectly, which suggests that some of the other factors mentioned were possible causes.
Primary Data research
I have decided to investigate the reasons for voter apathy in more detail by creating a questionnaire using the research that I have done so far, incorporating the following questions:
- Do you have an interest in Government and politics?
- Why don’t you have interest in Government and politics?
- Do you have faith in the Government of the day?
- Why don’t you have faith in the Government of the day?
- What do you think would best remedy the situation?
The questionnaire that I will ask people to fill out will not be worded exactly as above, and will have options, for example question 5 will have options such as: Better education, more restraint on the executive, etc. In order for the questionnaire to be ethically sound the questionnaire will also have the opportunity for people to skip questions if they do not want to, or do not need to answer them. I will also include questions to gain personal information about the subjects such as, age range, gender, and political view (if any, and if willing to share that information), in order to test whether there is any correlation between the answers. The information received will be quantitative and discrete and I will be able to show my results in the form of tables and charts. A copy of the questionnaire that I used will be included at the back of this research project.
Results:
I have the results from the questionnaires. As I work part time in a shop in Bicester, Oxfordshire, I decided to ask random customers whether they would like to participate in a completely confidential survey for my independent research project based on government and politics, the sample method that I have therefore used is opportunity sampling, and the target audience was the people of Bicester, and surrounding areas. I asked 40 people over a period of two days to fill in the questionnaire and came up with some interesting results. Below are tables of results for each question, I will then create some graphs based on the results of some of the questions.
Tables of results:
Question 1: What is your age?
Question 2: What is your gender?
Question 3: Do you have an interest in Government and Politics?
Question 4: Which political party do you support?
Question 5: Why don’t you have any interest in Government and Politics?
Question 6: How do you think this situation could be best remedied?
Question 7: Do you have faith in the Government of the day?
Question 8: What is the main reason for your lack of faith in the government of the day?
Representation and evaluation of data
Below is a bar chart showing the age range of the participants in a more visual way. As you can see, the chart suggests that the older that the person was the more likely they were to fill out the questionnaire, however this may not have been the case, and it may simply have been a coincidence that more people in the higher age ranges were coming into the shop on those two days. However the fact remains that the people who answered most of the questions were in the upper two age brackets which could be said to have swayed the results of the other questions. For example only 6 individuals answered ‘No’ to question 3: Do you have any interest in Government and Politics, however the results may have been different if a higher percentage of younger people were asked.
I was also interested by the results of question 4: Which political party do you support? As you can see from the pie chart below the majority of those asked were supporters of the conservative party, closely followed by those who did not wish to share that information. Labour supporters only contributed to 17% of the people asked, where as Liberal Democrat, and supporters of other parties only provided 3% each. However it must be said that because of the option to not share the information, the percentages given cannot be entirely accurate, and it could be that all 10 people who chose not to divulge the information were in fact supporters of the British Nationalist Party (B.N.P.) which would have affected the results dramatically.
It is also worth noting that the area in which this study was conducted was Oxfordshire, which is a conservative stronghold, and so this is not a fair representation.
Finally I chose to look at the answers from question 8: What is the main reason for the lack of faith in the government of the day? I’m very interested in the answers given to this question as they ultimately help to give evidence to prove my hypothesis that people in general have lost faith in our political system because of the scandalous behaviour of the politicians. I’ve decided to use the pie chart technique again to display this data because I think it clearly shows the difference between the answers.
According to this study it is obvious that the main reason for the loss of faith is due to the behaviour of the politicians, which is almost twice as prominent as that of the legislation that has been passed. However, the area in which this study was conducted must be taken into account, because the government of the day is Labour, and the study was carried out in a conservative area, which is almost certainly part of the reason that the way that they are.
Recommendations
If I was to conduct this study again, I would make a few changes in order to overcome some of the problems I have encountered. Firstly I would use a different method to acquire subjects for the questionnaire, which would probably be submitting my questionnaire to a specialised form distribution website. This is a web-site which allows people to fill in your form in confidence and in the privacy of their own homes. The reasons that I would use this method are because they would combat three confounding factors which could have skewed the results of my experiment. The first is that the test would be completed by a whole range of different people from many different constituencies, rather than just the one conservative constituency, providing fairer results. The second reason is that the subjects that filled in the questionnaire may have shown demand characteristics, which is answering some of the questions in a socially acceptable way, or in the way that they think I wanted them to. And the third reason is to eliminate or reduce the amount of subjects who answered question 4: Which political party do you support? with the answer: DO NOT WISH TO SHARE THIS INFORMATION. As I mentioned before, the participants may have answered this question with a political party if they were in the comfort of their own home and with little to no chance that the person asking them to carry out the survey would ever come face to face with them again.
Another improvement to the experiment would also be the amount of people asked. Although asking 40 people gave quite a good indication, it is still too few in order to gather strong evidence, and could be seen as coincidence for some of the answers. This is especially the case for my questionnaire because the types of questions that I had asked excluded some subjects from certain questions. For example it is almost impossible to conclude anything from the answers to question 6, as only 6 people out of the 40 surveyed were eligible to answer it. Using more people would be a solution to this problem; however that would also have been remedied by using the internet form filling web-site that I have mentioned above, as it can be left active for as long as the experimenter likes, the more days it is left for, the more people will participate in it.
And finally if this investigation were carried out again, I would suggest that the wording of question 8 should be slightly changed, as it implies that the question is about the executive, rather than politicians in general, and so biased views might have affected the answers given.
Conclusions and Evaluations
Evaluation of primary research
From the study carried out we can see that the results do in fact support the original hypothesis of the investigation, with the majority of those who have lost their faith in the government seemingly due to the scandalous behaviour of the politicians. However after writing my recommendations I think that the investigation was slightly flawed, and that the results that have been found are probably biased and over-exaggerated. I still believe that this probably is the main reason for the loss of faith, but as I mentioned in my recommendations, I think it would be a much fairer test if many more questionnaires were completed, and by people who reside in many different areas rather than just one. I also thought that recent scandal may have been a cause for high numbers of people who had lost faith, and that political related answers may also have skewed the results, for example as there was recent scandal involving conservative politicians it would be fair to say that the labour supporters might all have said that their reasons for the loss of faith is the scandalous behaviour, which could well have happened, but that would then mean that the conservative supporters are more likely to have blamed the recent legislation that has been passed as their main reason for concern. However the results show that only 9 people blamed the legislation, whereas 17 blamed the scandalous behaviour, and although there was the option to remain anonymous in their political views, the chances are that more conservative supporters took part in the investigation than any other party supporters due to the location of the investigation. It is worth noting, however, that supporters of political parties do tend to remember the headlines that affect the opposition better than they do the ones that affect their own parties, and with the affairs surrounding Labour politician and speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, in the fairly recent past, who was shown to have cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds per year in extra expenses which he is entitled to, however expenses such as £4,000 for his wife’s taxi’s, seem a little excessive in the face of the hard working citizens who pay for them, especially in these harder times of economical imbalance.
The survey that was carried out was successful in the other aspects, and I believe that all the subjects that took part were happy that their answers are completely confidential, and each and every subject was also debriefed after they had completed the questionnaire. Each subject was also notified of their right to withdrawal at any time, and the option to skip questions that they were not comfortable answering as well, thus proving that the experiment was ethically sound.
Conclusions drawn from the investigation
The investigation has taught me a lot about the different factors which are involved in the diminishing interest and faith in our government, and I am very pleased to have chosen this as an area of interest. Looking into some of the recent scandals, and how the government either covers it up, or deals with the problem is fascinating, and has given me a whole new view of the way that our country is controlled.
Earlier on in the investigation I suggested that government and politics should be a mandatory subject in the school curriculum, however after some further research I have found that there are in fact plans to introduce the subject of citizenship, which is not pure politics, but a step in the right direction. I remain a firm believer in the idea to teach students at a younger age about politics and the way that the country is controlled, however arguments that the children have to be a certain age because otherwise they will find it boring and not participate seem to prevail.
During the investigation I also looked into some other factors which may affect the low turnouts of general elections, and voter apathy, but one that I did not mention is the voting system itself. Again after some further reading I realise that another aspect that I had overlooked in my investigation, and also my questionnaire was the idea that the voting system may simply be too old, and is perhaps in need of radical improvement and dragging into the 21st century. Many people believe that the introduction of internet voting would be a way to contest voter apathy, and that having to leave the comfort of your own home, sometimes in the rain, to find the voting stations should be a thing of the past, however government officials believe that the traditional voting method should remain, and that the ever increasing amount of internet hacking and fraud which is committed everyday, renders the internet too insecure to entrust the redistribution of power to.
In conclusion I think that there are many important factors that need to be addressed in order to increase the turnouts of elections, and to restore faith in British politics, including the voting system, better education, and possibly better restraints on the legislation that is passed, however I still believe that if politicians are allowed to remain unpunished for scandalous behaviour and take advantage of the people who pay both their wages, and expenses, the faith in our so called democracy will never be restored.
Bibliography:
1 Budge et al, The New British Politics, Chapter 14 page 301
2 Audit Bureau of Circulations and National Readership Survey
3 Budge et al, The New British Politics, Chapter 14 page 303
4
5 BBC Radio 4 – Today in Parliament (Thursday 27th March 2008)
6BBC Radio 4 - Today in Parliament (Friday 28th March 2008)
7 House of Commons Research Paper 05/33 – http:/www.parlament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2005/rp05-033.pdf
References:
Budge, I. (2007). The New British Politics. Essex: Pearson Education LTD.
Edexcel. (2006). Study and revise AS and A2 Level Government and Politcs. London.
Lynch, P. (February 2008). MPs' Expenses. Politics Review , 7.
Phil Cocker, e. a. (2002). Contempory British Politics and Government. Gateshead: Athenaeum Press Ltd.
(2008, February 27th & 28th). Today in Politics. BBC Radio 4
Walsh-Atkins, P. (2005). AS UK Government and Politics. Leicester: Raithby Lawrence and Co.
- Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor of the Telegraph
Budge et al, The New British Politics, Chapter 14 page 301
Audit Bureau of Circulations and National Readership Survey
Budge et al, The New British Politics, Chapter 14 page 303
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/03/nexpenses103.xml
BBC Radio 4 – Today in Parliament (Thursday 27th March 2008)
BBC Radio 4 - Today in Parliament (Friday 28th March 2008)
House of Commons Research Paper 05/33 – http:/www.parlament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2005/rp05-033.pdf