We need the opposite to happen; when people get fed up they should join a political party and try to change it from within, or campaign for another party.

Perhaps we need to rebrand the concept of ‘giving up on politics’ – what people are actually doing is supporting the status quo. In other words, if they aren’t doing anything about it, they are part of the problem. Don’t let people abrogate their democratic responsibilities.

The problem is that it is a downward spiral; the higher the concentration of freaks, cronies, idiots and trough-feeders, the more it puts people off politics… and the less normal people join parties, thus making the problem worse.

Politics itself needs rebranding. The only solution I can see is making civic involvement (parties, charities, social groups) intrinsic to school life from an early age. Get pupils involved in weekly political debates and have political parties in every school. Kids could be encouraged to set up their own school parties and debate issues relevant to them etc.

So, whereas roughly 3% of the population were political party members in 1980, in just 28 years this has plummeted to around 1%.

But even these shocking numbers hide what a desperate state our political parties are really in. In reality just 10%-20% of members are activists. The party activists form the core pool from which a party must select its councillors, MPs, MEPs and so on.

The less activists there are who are willing to stand for election, the poorer the quality and choice of candidates, for all parties. Given the collection of freaks, madmen and obsessives that parties attract as activists, the pool of ‘normal’ people is looking increasingly inadequate.

Britain is facing a crisis – the quality of our politicians is dropping right across the board. Unless that is dealt with soon, and the decline continues, we simply won’t have enough people of calibre to run the country. The only solution then will be to reduce the number of politicians and increase the number of appointees and bureaucrats to replace them. In otherwords, democracy itself is under threat.

I’ve also intermittently had friendly responses on the doorstep to help deliver our leaflets turn ugly when it became clear that we aren’t a commercial operation.

It’s no wonder many people get confused by politics.

Ash was implying that people obviously do it for the cash (“kerching”!). I don’t think that’s the case. And probably for the hours put in, the hassle and the thankless nature of much of the work, I’m sure it doesn’t feel like a lot of money.

Some Mets pay £10-11k as a basic allowance. I agree that no-one does it only for the pay but likewise nor can you describe it as not being “a lot of money”.

It’s certainly not something to do if you’re only in it for the pay (and I speak as someone who is neither a councillor nor Party employee).

In which case, a falling membership across the parties might reflect a similar unwillingness to nail one’s trousers to any particular mast. Which, ironically, might suggest people are getting more individualistic and small-l liberal.

Second, I note from the published figures that the Tory party membership income was just over £1.25 million last year – that tells me that they have a big problem – the numbers that they claim to be members are a lot more than we would count. Must include a large numbre who have ‘lapsed’ and not paid a bean for a few years….

I feel we should be making members a priority and supporters too – and also build an active base of those who help and support but aren’t yet members, and communicate with them – that will help us win campaigns in the future…

Democratic participation is being squeezed between these two inflexible authoritarian views endorsed by consecutive Labour and Conservative administrations (and their ‘strong’ leaders).

Thatcherism and the New Labour project need to be held to account for the damage they’ve done to our democratic institutions and the only way to do that is to provide a suitably inclusive and liberal alternative.

The decline in party support becomes a never ending spiral – the more select the group that are ‘inside’ the less people outside are hearing the party’s message. I could write a long essay here about how to engage people in politics but it’s really not worth the effort – the information is out there we’re just not using it.

There are countless books etc. but really you just have to glance over the atlantic to see how it should be done. Although from past experience I’m guessing the party will do that and then implement it in a half-arsed way because we can’t spare the funds to do it properly.

I am not sure that money is necessarily the issue. Many organisations have higher subscription rates and a much bigger membership than us. That’s not to say I would necessarily want to see our subscription go up massively, but it does illustrate that money is not the only issue.

Someone, somewhere, might have the answer !

It’s not just financial dependence.

Members of a political parties get to do a lot of important things.

We get to choose who are going to be candidates at all levels and where we are in power that means we get to choose those who make the decisions about how are takes are going to be spent.

If you are a member of the Labour Party or Tories you could also get an opportunity (although not just by being a member)to choose the Prime Minister.

If membership is falling and if it is getting less representative of people then there is danger that we will fail to take into account what the electorate want in terms of who are canddaites etc.

I used to work with a guy who said that he never forgave the Torie for getting rid of Margaret Thatcher; he thought that the public should have made that decision. My response/retort was to suggest that he should join the party if he wanted to decide who was going to be the Tory leader.

But if being a member of a poitical party, let alone an active one, becomes such a minority occupation so that many people never ever meet a party member of any hue in their life time, then we are in danger of risking a democratic deficit.