I am forever amazed that what passes for representation in the United Kingdom is called Democracy. Leaving aside the obvious inequality of England having no independent governing assembly, our parliamentary system, so often used as a shining example, falls a long way short of being truly democratic.

Taking the 1997 general election as an example of a ‘landslide’ win by a political party, Tony Blair’s New Labour still only secured 43.2% of the vote (of the 71.4% who actually voted). If my rusty maths are correct, that’s not actually a majority! In fact, it is hard to imagine a true democracy being possible in a party political system.

I know that I am politically disenfranchised and I should imagine that the vast majority of people are, and this leads inevitably to political apathy and scepticism. Assuming that only one of the three main parties can achieve government – and that’s a big assumption in itself – how am I supposed to cast my vote?

Let’s say, for example, that I want to take the UK out of the European Union. The honest answer is I vote for none of them but if I have to chose then it has to be Conservative. Let’s further suppose that I support higher taxes to support the underprivileged. Well, surely that’s Labour. Parliamentary reform? Liberal Democrats. The return of Capital Punishment? Well – none of the above but that’s OK because I don’t want it but many people do.

And at the end of the day, should I not be voting for the candidate and not the party to which they belong? What if I really believed that the local BNP candidate would do wonders for the constituency even though I loathe his political stance? Casting my vote for another candidate is worse than a compromise.

I used to feel that voting in a general election should be mandatory but the Blair years have washed away my political optimism and until the system is changed I am in future withholding my vote.

I have always believed that the most truly democratic tool available to government – and one that all governments seem frightened to institute – is the referendum. I will next vote in a general election for whichever political party promises referenda and subsequent binding action on the following:

• Full devolution within the United Kingdom and the creation of a parliament for England and its affairs.
• Whether to remain in the European Union.
• Parliamentary reform and the adoption of proportional representation.
• Whether we want our society to be ‘multi-cultural’.
• More or less state involvement and intrusion.
• Whether to reverse the steady erosion of our liberties over recent years.
• A complete overhaul of our outdated and often incompetent judicial system including a debate on sentencing and punishments.

There are others but that will do for starters.