UK Politics

Contempt for the electorate

London Elects posters

Stupid, lazy and indifferent. That’s how ‘London Elects‘ appartently views the voters of London – if its media is anything to go by.

Uninspired and uninspiring, the posters displayed across the city (these I snapped on the Underground) are a disgrace. The electorate are characterised as bumbling muppets of the Homer Simpson variety, who might note vote because they’re too easily distracted, too stupid to realise there’s an election on, or can’t be bothered to find out where the polling stations are.

Perhaps a more mature discourse on the real reasons many might not vote would be more productive – and honest. This might include the fact that the candidates themselves, including the incumbent mayor and his chief challenger, are an uninspiring mob of chancers.

Personally, I think it is a civic duty to vote – even if one spoils one’s paper – but surely the millions spent on the London Elects campaign could have been more inspiring? Instead it insults Londoners – and in a self-fulfilling prophesy – gives many average Londoners one more reason not to vote for a political establishment haughtily disengaged from the people.