Firstly, Mary, you need to be given the power to sack any politician who's proved to be corrupt. It's something I advocated in the past, it's something I put forward in Westminster, both David Cameron and Gordon Brown's party didn't support that. They now say, which is good, say they do welcome that. You're the boss, you're the boss. The other thing of course we need to do is clean up all the murky business of party funding. We've all had problems with party funding. Again, there was a deal, there was a deal on the table, we supported it, to clean up party funding. Yet again, the old parties said no. Gordon Brown wanted to protect his trade union pay masters, David Cameron wanted to protect his paymaster in Belize. I think we all agree on the rhetoric of cleaning up politics, but we actually have to act. I'd say one final thing: one of the reasons why your friends and your neighbours are perhaps right in saying they feel ignored is because we have this very odd electoral system which allows Gordon Brown the Prime Minister to be in power when only 22% of people voted for his party last time, many people are being ignored and we need to change that as well. I am indeed for a complete nonsense story. But, anyway, let's put that aside. Complete rubbish. Mary, one of the most heartening things, back to your question about people sort of feeling disaffected, one of the most heartening things over the last week, and it is one of the great effects of the televised leaders' debates, is that more and more young people appear to be rushing to register to vote before it is too late. That is immensely exciting. There are lots of especially young people, I hope I'm not out of turn saying you look fairly young, who might be in your position, who feel.. who felt for so long completely turned off by the old Party Politics, and they are now excited, they're beginning to hope, they're beginning to think that we can do something different this time. that's what I think. I think we can do something different this time. But get stuck in, if you didn't vote before, if you didn't register, register. It's your country, it's your future, assert your right to vote, assert your right to shape your own future. I think then we could make this election one of the most exciting elections we have had in a very long time. |