Alienation from politics

Helena Kennedy, the chairwoman of the Power Inquiry, an independent committee that spent 12 months asking why voters feel disengaged from politics, says apathy is not the issue. "The people are not the problem. They are interested in politics. They do care about the bread-and-butter issues that affect their lives; they do care about their communities and neighbourhoods, their country and the world, but they are totally alienated from the political system. We heard it up and down the country - formal democracy is failing the people. ... The disenchantment cuts across all sections of society, but the political class just do not get it. They do not realise how deep the alienation runs. ... More fundamental reform is needed if we are to re-establish a democracy fit for a 21st-century People."

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