It is not to job out a task of piece-work that the nation can rally to its assistance artificers responsive to its every purpose rising to a Great Civic Crisis.

We find it extraordinary that this collapse in electoral participation, put alongside other evidence on civic disengagement, has not been treated as a Civic Crisis demanding an appropriate response.

Soon after the general election, after I had been pontificating about the Civic Crisis and the need to engage people more in the process, I received a letter from someone who had heard my remarks but is not a constituent.