This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Bristol has voted to bin its mayor. We should all do the same

By:   []

Date: 2022-05 

As I write, the question still being asked about the local and national election results, is: What does this mean for Boris Johnson as prime minister?

That’s partly a function of the extremely limited, weak political coverage in our tycoon-dominated mainstream media. It’s a long-term scar that’s had huge impacts, with politics covered as though it was a tennis match rather than actual issues and choices being explored.

As a former newspaper editor, I understand those pressures – and they’re not easy to overcome. The good news is that the mainstream media becomes less significant by the day – with local, alternative outlets and individual writers becoming more and more important.

Of course, it is also a function of the London-centric nature of the mainstream. Politics is largely covered by lobby journalists, for whom Watford is a distant and exotic place. Local elections are the annual day or two for which they have to notice there is more to the country than Westminster. To their displeasure – it is all so complicated, and not easily reduced into a story of two sides of a see-saw, one being up and one being down.

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The focus on personality is not only the fault of the media. It is also the way the two largest parties have chosen to play the political game for decades. Indeed, it seems to be central to both of their philosophies and approaches.

The idea of a ‘strong leader’, of focusing the campaign on one individual, was not only a hallmark of the 2017 and 2019 general elections. It is also how both parties have sought to tackle the dissatisfaction arising from the extraordinary (on a European scale and in its own terms) concentration of power and resources in Westminster. That’s what I’d say – combined with the undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system – drove the success of the ‘take back control’ slogan in 2017.
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