Try talking to the people

Not least of which is the appalling inadequacy of the Tory and Lib Dem candidates and the uniformly anti-working class nature of their political analyses.

But you wouldn't think so if you measured the parties by the dreadful series of so-called leaders' debates that are polluting the airwaves of late.

These US presidential-style debates, of course, suit the agenda of new Labour perfectly.

The new Labour tactic has been to consistently isolate and marginalise activists in local Labour parties, barring them from office where possible and gagging them where it's not.

Policy comes from the top, is enunciated and explained from the top and the top, of course, has been shanghaied by new Labour.

Conferences don't take votes, policy decisions are either not made or considered advisory and, as a result, Labour's policy is consistent, coherent and unified.

But it's consistently right-wing, coherently capitalist and unified around a set of ideas that would put any working-class controlled party to shame.

These leaders' debates are the ideal vehicle for this, since there are no dissenting voices. Even the audiences are sworn to silence and the master of ceremonies gets a rollicking if he intervenes.

Which leads to cosy, three-way debates between three leaders, who largely agree on the objectives but only disagree on the means of achieving them.

It is reflected, as well, in the attitudes of the parties' central offices when dealing with the press.

The Morning Star deals with some uncomfortable subjects on occasion but, in keeping with the ethics newspapers are supposed to adopt, we nearly always try to give parties a chance to comment on the stories that we run.

However, since the election was set, our telephone calls on stories such as the plight of Ahmed Belbacha or Shaker Aamer have met with a blank refusal of the main parties to comment, even to the extent of not returning the calls.

Clearly, such subjects are not considered appropriate to pre-election periods and, for the parties, are too hot to handle.

In other words, they're not vote-winners so the poor sods can languish in detention and be deported for torture at will, all in the cause of electioneering.

This new politics is so depersonalised that saying nothing on difficult issues seems to be the order of the day. But this isn't what electioneering is about.

Rather than the leaders dictating what they want to talk about and saying only what they choose to, it used to be the case that candidates went out on the knocker and the voters quizzed them on their own concerns. This frequently put those candidates on the spot and pushed them into explaining their own positions, which were often miles away from the plastic pronunciations of studio-bound "leaders."

Talk to Labour candidates and you'll frequently find the real aspirations of Labour's activists, not the pale pretences of Westminster's controlling elite.

And some of them you might even want to vote for because of those real aspirations.

On the knocker, you'll find a range of other progressive candidates you might find worthy of a vote.

But you won't see them on these phoney debates and you won't read their opinions in a gagged and manipulated press.

This "new" political dimension of public debate is nothing of the sort. It's the old, old story of a political elite smothering the aspirations of the rank and file in favour of its own preset and agreed agenda.

It's politics without people, without dissent and without spontaneity. It's simple manipulation to restrict, not widen the range of political debate.

In short, it's a fiddle. Politics is about people, not about plastic dummies in prearranged debates.