How we lost people's trust

Ex-Liberal Democrat leader in the UK, Charles Kennedy, writes an interesting piece in the Guardian today about the erosion in the public's faith in the political process. In it he recants for helping to produce this situation by avoiding debate on the 'the big, divisive issues - particularly at election time'. Kennedy says that politicians such as himself are to blame for following focus groups and ruthlessly targeting swing voters in order to get elected. Instead of raising the 'real issues of strategic substance' and attempting to influence public debate these things, he says parties are only interested in 'vote winners'. I guess this is all part of Kennedy's campaign to win the Liberal Democrat leadership back, but it's nice to read his confession and it's stimulated a good discussion on the Guardian site.