Sidebar: PCC Elections

With the PCC votes still being counted, I think it's clear that turnout was humiliatingly low.

So, what now?

Well, the system being employed for these elections means that these new PCCs will have at least 50%+1 of their vote -- so, this means they're really only being endorsed by roughly 10% of their electorate. That, I think, is a clear democratic deficit.

So what  should be the response? Well, the current reaction among ministers is to point to the bad weather, or voter ignorance and say "Well, what else can you expect?"

Well, I think this is the wrong approach. These posts are something that nobody asked for. I think they understood that the commissioner was there to set budgetary priorities and hire/fire the Chief Constable. I think people also understood the virtue of having an elected figure to make sure the police's priorities were the public's. That's not a lot to understand. I think the failure comes from one simple fact: the candidates were all appalling.

The reasons for this are multiple and perhaps overlapping. This election was hijacked by Labour and Conservatives alike,* completely  undermining any claim to be about localism. A truly local election should have banned political parties, making this not about Westminster politics -- which alienates many capable people -- but making it about local issues.

This should have been a time for brave, bold campaigns -- getting the public to ask serious questions about what they want their police to do, given that they cannot do it all in the context of declining budgets. Instead, what we got was vacuous slogans about cutting crime and supporting the police.

Finally, ex-police chiefs should have been barred from standing. The point of this is to open up the police club to the public and stop the organisational inertia and the formation of old boys' clubs. These things certainly contribute to institutional failings -- such as cover-ups, racism and other serious failings.

Anyway, the post-mortem hastily done, what should these new officials do now? Well, I personally favour a grand gesture on all of their behalfs to resign, citing their failure to win the confidence of the public and advocating the post's radical overhaul, or abolition. That won't happen, because that would be a movie ending.

Instead, I only hope that they can do in office what they failed to do in the campaign. I hope that they spend this term of office showing the power of the office and engaging with the public when crises happen and leading the discussion as to how things are resolved. Beyond that, they should largely provide continuity -- because the public haven't voted for them to change things.

* Other political parties stood, but they're not generally Westminster parties. The Lib Dems did the honourable thing and chose not to provide blanket funding for the campaigns, reducing their number.