Our mature democracy has taken against political practitioners. They compete with estate agents and tabloid journalists for the wooden spoon of professional popularity, and our media delights in pouring scorn on their activities.

Thoughtful commentators have long worried that this is a serious challenge to our democracy, and initiatives such as the Power Commission have wrestled with the problem of re-connecting the governed to those whom we elect. The recent English Communities & Local Government Department White Paper on Empowerment (see Trigger Points below) is just the latest in a string of attempts to bridge this gap and create new mechanisms to help people feel that it’s worth becoming involved in political choices and public debate. We reviewed some of these in the last Tuesday Topic.