- ‘What did the Romans ever do for me..?’ - 28th July 2026
- It’s all Greek to me - 27th July 2026
- Counting the cost… - 24th July 2026
In the wake of the Makerfield by-election (when Labour and Reform UK claimed between them to have knocked on every door in the constituency at least 10 times), the vote on the same day in Aberdeen South, and last month’s ballot for the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC), senior politicians worry that voter fatigue is affecting turnout.
Even the excitement of the resignation yesterday of Sir Keir Starmer may spark only a brief interest in politics because the trend in General Elections is relentlessly downward, with the occasional blip.
In 1945 the turnout figure was 83.9 percent, but at the 2024 one it was about 60 percent, the lowest since 2001, when it was 59.4 percent.
This was after the drama of Brexit, and the extraordinary spectacle of witnessing ministers, as well as Prime Ministers come and go.
A Labour politician told us: “We’re very worried about this, and we’re having strategy meetings about it. It’s not to do with our policies, its whether the electorate are interested at all, so they might not turn out”.
A Conservative one declared: “We are getting feedback during campaigning, that the electorate do not want to be bothered”.
A Welsh Liberal Democrat said: “The danger for us is that we might get squeezed. People have to be politically engaged to vote Liberal Democrat”.
These comments reflect what has happened across the UK.
For example, for five weeks, potential voters in Makerfield were inundated with campaigners (and journalists) as Labour MPs from across the party’s factions rushed to the area to curry favour with the eventual victor, Andy Burnham.
The situation was summed up by a message posted outside one house in the village of Platt Bridge the day before the by-election: “Knock on door, lose our vote”.
Hopefully there won’t be the same fatigue over stories on The Eye. We don’t want to lose readers!
The memories of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s remarkable decades long award-winning career in journalism (when there were fewer elections at the start), as he was gripped by the rare and incurable neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
