Politicians appear in the most unusual places...in an election campaign

Politicians appear in the most unusual places...in an election campaign

Get all the latest politics news Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

There is every chance that next Friday Birmingham could end up with exactly the same ten MPs it had a month ago

Of the ten only the future of Lib Dem MP John Hemming seems, at this stage, to be in any real doubt as he battles to hold on to his Yardley seat.

He is locked in a close contest with Labour but polls are predicting that he may just cling on.

We don't even have an MP retiring this time, despite the best efforts of some Labour members to get Roger Godsiff to give up his Hall Green seat.

If any, other than Mr Hemming, do lose their seats it will be a genuine shock.

We're testing a new site: This content is coming soon

So at a national level we have one of the closest general elections in recent memory with the final result anything but clear, while in Birmingham we have one of the most boring.

That is not a comment on the quality of any of our defending MPs, or their challengers.

But in an election billed as the most exciting in years, voters in safe seats like Sutton Coldfield and Ladywood are virtual bystanders.

Also at a national level we have seen the arrival of genuine multi-party politics with UKIP, the Greens and SNP playing a major part in more constituencies than ever before.

In Birmingham these growing parties are very much fringe players, perhaps only having an impact by reducing majorities of sitting MPs rather than dumping them on the political scrap heap.

After throwing the kitchen sink at the Edgbaston constituency for three successive elections and falling short every time the Tories have taken their foot off the gas.

Defending Labour MP Gisela Stuart, who has been on a war footing more or less continually since she was first elected in 1997, says she is not complacent. "I some ways an absence of war is just as worrying as a constant battle," she says.

We know that party campaign strategists are targeting their resources on a few target seats - it's why we see Nick Clegg and senior Lib Dems visiting Solihull every five minutes, Labour has wheeled Eddie Izzard and other big names into Yardley and Halesowen and the Prime Minister and Chancellor in Longbridge and Cannock Chase.

But voters elsewhere are left out. The first past the post election system designed to deliver strong Government in a two party state is failing to do that. At the same time it leaves millions effectively excluded from the election process. We need to change it.