The local elections last month were marked by a turnout of a mere 30% of electors across the country and a range of different studies show that the residents of the UK are less supportive of our political processes than in the past. According to the Hansard Society only 41% of the population are likely to vote if a snap election was called immediately which should be enough to send a shock throughout Westminster. Sadly the Government seems likely to read this with a similar level of apathy that the Audit by Hansard shows exists amongst the population at large towards their elected Government. The attitude towards elected representatives once in power has been consistently low for many years.

With this backdrop perhaps it is understandable that Governments feel able to manipulate both the Government itself and those that advise Governments to their own taste. This week we have read the news that the former boss of BT Ian Livingston is to leave his post at the Telecommunications giant and take up a seat in the Cabinet as Minister for Trade and Investment to replace Lord Stephen Green of Hurstpierpoint who has worked in that role since early 2011 after leaving HSBC. Both men are able to do this by being elevated to the Lords, both men have agreed to do so at their own expense (although it is not clear if Stephen Green has claimed the Lords daily allowance). In terms of advisors this week we also learned of the appointment of Nick Seddon to the pool of Number 10 advisors who report to the Prime Minister and advise him on health policy formation. Seddon is a former lobbyist and private healthcare advocate so perhaps this is a clever way of reducing the number of people lobbying the Government from without by bringing them into the heart of Government.

The previous Governments under both Blair and Brown also operated in this manner bringing experts in from the world outside politics to the Cabinet table and recruiting advisers from a range of organisations that helped to reassure these powerful politicians that their ideas are right after all. This use of people from outside the political classes does not appear to have caught the publics attention in a good way, but perhaps it has not contributed over much to the deterioration in confidence? In my own dealing with Politicians one of the substantive defences they use when challenged over their actions is that the public ultimately gets to hire or fire them through the ballot box. The weakness of that argument is that people such as Nick Seddon, Ian Livingston and Stephen Green were not elected, they were not even interviewed as part of an open and transparent process. Yet they are wielding power (or influencing its use) in ways that most residents in this country could never challenge. This power does not belong to David Cameron, it does not belong to the coalition. It belongs to the nation. The lack of tangible accountability even at the level of local MPs is something that seems very disturbing. If the Cabinet was more accountable over issues such as this, perhaps they would also be a bit more sensitive to the decisions they take that affect ordinary people on a daily basis. It feels like time for a change, and I don’t mean replacing the blue and yellow team, with a red team (or a purple team!.