Time to raise their game

Never, not even four years ago, can the announcement of a general election have been greeted with so little excitement and enthusiasm by so many voters.

Tony Blair showed the hand he had been flashing at us for months and confirmed, yes, it would be May 5. In fact Downing Street confirmed as much on Sunday in its eagerness to show respect to Pope John Paul II, making the last 48 hours not so much a phoney war as a phoney phoney war.

So what now? The latest polls suggest Labour - bouyed by a sound economy and up against an opposition still regrouping after the cataclysm of eight years ago - seems likely to ease to victory with a majority of around 85.

This would be an historic victory. But that word `historic' conjures images sadly at odds with the apathy felt by millions. For this reason it is not so much the Government whose record is to be tested, but the reputation of all politicians.

Will any of the three major parties be able to claim genuine satisfaction on May 6? There is no merit in retaining power, or recovering ground in Parliament, or picking off `groundbreaking' individual seats if the turnout continues to decline, leaving all three to scrap for votes in a smaller and smaller pool.

Why have we lost faith in our politicians? Partly because the distinctions between major parties has been blurred so much, leaving a great many serious issues - the environment, pension reform, Europe - largely untouched.

But also because politics has become a game divorced from the reality of peoples' lives.

We saw two examples of this yesterday.

First, in Newcastle, a group of Labour city councillors senior enough to know better set out to heckle the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy in the street.

Just how many passers-by did they hope to win over by this childish behaviour? Perhaps they hadn't even considered what onlookers would think.

To us it seemed like a stunt not aimed at the public, or even the media, but at their rival activists in the Liberal Democrats - a small coterie scoring points off each other.

We saw point-scoring of another sort over the gambling bill. Ministers pushed this controversial legislation, altered it, prevaricated and now - because the Prime Minister's timetable is supreme - agreed a hurried, ill-thought out compromise.

Within the corridors of power we suspect Government and opposition alike are congratulating themselves on their scheming.

But the gambling bill is not just a piece of paper. Many miles from Westminster it offered a route to urban regeneration - whatever your views on the morality of super casinos - in major North East towns and cities.

Time, effort and money was spent drawing up proposals for new casinos, hopes were raised, strategies developed over months, and all snuffed out with the stroke of a pen.

Fourteen other pieces of legislation face the same fate as the gambling bill - all of them proposals Labour has put forward, and gained political capital from, knowing all the while it was almost certain to call an election on May 5 that would stop them in their tracks.

The public would appreciate honest debate, not backroom deals in Westminster or street-corner slanging matches in Newcastle.

It would appreciate a Government with a huge mandate finishing its legislative programme instead of rushing to the country a year earlier than it needed to.

And because it has got neither of these, we fear it would now appreciate an extra box on the ballot paper this May, marked: "None of the above."

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