The real winner of the Selby and Ainsty byelection was voter apathy - Andy Brown

If the people I spoke to were anything to go by then this was not just a bit of unimportant apathy. There is a deep well of discontent out there that is very dangerous. The majority of people in Britain seem to have lost confidence that they will get someone they can trust representing them who will fight for their needs. Voters hold a huge amount of power. Anyone who has ever stood in a counting hall waiting with the candidates to see what result comes out of the ballot boxes will know that. No one knows what will happen and some very influential people are totally at the mercy of the choices made by those who turn out and vote.

It takes quite a lot for people who have been handed the amazing ability to kick people out of office and choose a fresh representative to lose all confidence that there is any point in bothering. That gulf between local people and their voice in Parliament isn’t going to get better without significant change.

Part of the problem is that too many of our politicians have given the impression that the only reason they are interested in taking on the job is their own self-interest and their own sense of self-importance. All too often it seems that politics is only for the professionals and that too many of the people who are supposed to be representing us are mainly influenced by those who have deep pockets. Much of what is said and done seems to be driven by momentary convenience rather than honest conviction.

For many the rot really began to set in when Tony Blair told us that we needed to trust him to lead us into invading another country because his position of Prime Minister had enabled him to see evidence of weapons of mass destruction. When it turned out that he had seen no such thing and that we had gone to war on the basis of a lie it did immense damage.

The Liberal Democrats didn’t help matters much when they promised faithfully to cut tuition fees and then entered a government that put them up by £6,000 a year.

But the prize for provoking cynicism must go to the current ruling party. Sat at home during Covid the majority of people listened night after night to the leaders of our country giving us important advice about what we needed to do to keep ourselves safe. Ordinary people took that advice seriously and made extraordinary sacrifices in their personal lives because they were convinced that we were all in this together and it was the right thing to do.

It turned out that the Prime Minister took a more casual view about the rules, the Health Secretary was at a very close social distance with his new lover, the Chief Political Adviser for the government was taking road trips to test his eye sight and millions of pounds worth of contracts were being given out to friends. As soon as the crisis was over the people who we really could trust such as NHS workers and care staff were quickly forgotten and subjected to lectures about how big a cut in their standard of living they needed to take.

Then there is the whole experience of Brexit. Enormous numbers of people turned out to vote in that referendum. Whichever way they voted there can be few who now think that they have got what they wanted and who are more inclined to believe what they are told by a politician than they were before.

N either a contrite Conservative leader promising to focus on practical delivery nor a bland Labour leader who seems to think that all we really need is a re-run of the Blair era is going to find it easy to restore trust and reconnect with the public.

It is going to take a very long time to rebuild the connection that has been lost between the public and the people who are supposed to represent them. That is unlikely to ever be achieved by remote Westminster politicians. What is needed is to take politics much more local and to make it easier for people to vote for people they trust to be rooted in their community and to have some real power to act on their behalf. A Yorkshire Parliament might help with that. So would proportional representation.

Andy Brown is a Green Party North Yorkshire Councillor for Aire Valley.