Although the massacre of the Tories in last week’s first ever Somerset West and Taunton Council elections was much celebrated by victorious Liberal Democrats – less by my less successful Green Party – democracy as a failing British value took another very sad downward plunge.

The average voter turnout for the whole council was as little as 27 per cent, in fact only 23 per cent if adjusted for non-registered people.

In other words, the 77 per cent non-voters ‘won’ by the biggest margin ever for this area, indeed for the whole of Somerset.

This big democratic deficiency was further deeply enlarged by the fact that only seven out of nearly a hundred parish/town council areas had any contested elections at all, simply because of a grotesque lack of candidates.

A bit of this downturn for democracy can be attributed to the dreadful Tory mess-up over Brexit, but I reckon an underlying anti-government, anti-registration, anti-voting culture has been developing over the past two or three decades for many reasons - primarily ones keeping the under 30s away as ‘too busy’, ‘my vote won’t matter, ‘they’re all the same’, ‘they’re in it for themselves’, ‘unfair voting system’, ‘register paranoia’, etc.

I thought the recent onset of younger people – students and younger adults – getting involved in council and government declarations of climate emergency and the very successful new Extinction Rebellion movement would be good news for electoral democracy.

Unfortunately this has not happened, although calls for regional and national, possibly countywide, ‘Citizens’ Conventions’ to determine the best ways forward to combat our severe climate and democracy crises still could provide positive guidance for government solution action plans.

With the current thrust of our politics still on Brexit, could the probable coming Euro elections on May 23 be a big spur for people at least to try to make democracy actually work on the simple test of getting voter turnouts well over the 50 per cent mark?

With most contesting parties now having their list of six candidates in place for the South West’s six European parliamentary seats, and where the voting is for party (not candidate) with seats being decided more fairly in proportion to total votes cast for your party, surely there could be no excuse for yet another disgustingly low turnout?

Greens say yes to Europe’s environmentalism and a confirmatory people’s vote.

Alan Debenham, Clifford Avenue, Taunton.