As a journalism student, I have spent the last few days covering the council elections here in Sheffield and indeed two hours ago I went to place my vote.
This city in South Yorkshire was once one of the most ardently Labour in the whole of the United Kingdom, being led by such luminaries as future Home Secretary David Blunket.
Yet today there is no party with overall control of Sheffield City Council and it looks likely that tomorrow it will become a city run by the Liberal Democrats.
Whether or not this happens, it is an outstanding turning point in British history.
The Labour Party was set up to protect the interests of the 19th century’s urban working class, the sort of people who worked in the steel mills that made Sheffield famous around the world. Industrial cities in Wales, the north of England and Scotland took to Labour like a duck to water.
That Labour have changed so much that it can realistically lose power in a town like Sheffield says much about the transforming nature of politics in Britain.
However, the national media hasn’t really said much about this, its focus in the last few weeks has been on the battle between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in London. I want to know why.
I don’t live in London, in fact most of the United Kingdom doesn’t live in London. The UK has a population of 60, 587, 300, of whom 7,512,400 live in the Greater London area.
Or to put it another way 53, 074, 900 of people in the UK are not Londoners.
So why have I had to plough my way through endless column inches on the London mayoral election, something that does not remotely affect my life?
If I were a Londoner, I would want to know about this. London has dozens of its own local newspapers as well as several TV and radio stations, all of whom can cover the mayoral contest with greater relevance to Londoners than the Guardian or Telegraph. So why did these papers fill their pages with stories relating to the election?
Editors need to realise that London is not the be all and end all for people in this country. Most of us are not Londoners and are more concerned about our own local authority elections than the fight between Ken and Boris.
We need the media to give equal importance to the affairs of all parts of this country rather put London in the Premiership of reporting importance and relegates the rest of the country to the second division.
Only then will it truly become the national media.
