Most of us can't vote for Nicola Sturgeon, not even me and I live near Corby. It's also easy to see her and Leanne Wood and possibly even Natalie Bennett as the Will Self contributor to Question Time, the Ian Hislop of Any Questions, the anti establishment political commentator who can make some off-the-cuff critique of all the political system in general and offer a trite solution or even worse - the Russell Brand - no solution because they do not have an election to win; they know they will never be called to account for their policies. Who cares if Natalie Bennett gets her sums wrong? She's never going to have to actually do them.
I think this new type of politics offers hope for our parliament. I disagree with all the commentators who told us that after the last election we got a government that none of us had voted for. In actual fact that seems to me to be exactly what everyone wants, the general public does not trust politicians, and the idea of them having to work together appeals to us. A rainbow coalition, a vote for consensus politics is what we hoped for.
Maybe it can work, Germany does ok. It's tempting to think that that is one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of minority or single interest parties such as UKIP. I find it difficult to watch Nigel Farage without wishing he spoke in "meeps" like Beaker from the Muppets of whom he reminds me. The idea that he speaks for the common people makes my skin crawl; I've never even met a banker. However I think our democracy is strong enough and established enough to accommodate even more than a handful of UKIP MPs. It's tempting to believe that they will be the first to shoot themselves in the foot even without a fake sheikh to catch them in another sting. If there are a number of parties represented with no overall majority then all policies will have to be negotiated and compromised on. Extreme views will not be able to dictate policy.
One of the reasons that Natalie Bennett, Leanne Wood and particularly Nicola Sturgeon may have come out slightly better than the three leaders of the three main parliamentary parties is one of the things they should be capitalising on. People do see Nigel Farage as a man of the people but maybe they can see the other three as women of the people. They don't look like our idea of the establishment. They are women. They don't sound like most other professional MPs from the Bullingdon Club, independent education or even London. They speak English with regional / national (!) accents. And Nicola Sturgeon actually has leadership experience. We may not all be able to vote for all of these parties but it may start to engage non voters in politics in a way that doesn't involve patronising working people by assuming we are fooled by a pint and a sneaky cigarette.
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