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There's nothing new in the idea of pleasures playing their part in quashing public restlessness. That's what the Romans meant by bread and circuses after all. As the pundits continue to predict the lowest ever turn out in the next general election, the list of the ways people enjoy or numb themselves becomes ever longer.

Gambling is growing by 3.5 per cent in this country; 70 per cent of us have apparently placed a bet at some time or another. Binge drinking is on the rise. Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen by more than 700 per cent in the UK in the past decade.

Some might argue that personal addictions have nothing to do with a sense of public powerlessness. But let us presume there is a connection. Within my own lifetime, for instance, there has been a big shift in our perception about the power of popular politics. Those of us born in the 1950 and 1960s, maybe even the early 1970s, were essentially part of that post-war baby boom, the generation that enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom.

With that came a sense of optimism about human change and progressive politics whether through socialism, social democracy, feminism, trade unionism or more personal liberation politics.

Something fundamental has shifted in politics. World problems now feel as if they are beyond the reach of national governments let alone groups of citizens or individuals. Most of us are reduced to spectator status. Yes, television allows the terrors of the tsunami to enter our homes, so we give generously. But there's something numbing, too, about a culture in which the horrors of natural disaster jostle for space on the paper's front pages with Germaine Greer's entry - and exit - from Big Brother.

Call me cynical, but government policy seems more interested in keeping us happy in the short term than getting us politically involved. If Blairism is about anything it is about tight control from the top with decisions flowing from the centre. After seven years of government, there's a distinct air of "we know best, leave it to us!"
For a puritanical party, New Labour has done a lot to promote what the Victorians called "vice". Or as The Guardian's Martin Kettle put it bluntly last year: "Government ministers are happier doing the bidding of the richest players in the relevant industry than they are of defying them."

Tessa Jowell's gambling bill gives the nod to the creation of a large batch of super-casinos. Much has been made of offers to provide on-site professional help to potential addicts and the promise of social housing and other leisure facilities as an "add on" to the casinos. Socially responsible gambling? Sounds a bit odd to me. The government also seems determined to press on with laws to introduce 24-hour drinking, despite opposition from the police and the devastation that binge drinking brings to most town centres up and down the country on a weekly basis.

Putting reasonable brakes on drinking and gambling and the corporate profits associated with them would be one move in the right direction. But what of the deeper problems, of apathy, disillusionment, lack of political involvement?

A recent survey of those who voted in 1997 finds that they feel betrayed by the so-called new politics. In a forthcoming pamphlet, Compass, a Labour pressure group, declares that these voters now believe that this government has led to "the establishment of a marketised monoculture where freedom is defined only as the ability to shop, not to change the world in which you liveÉ" Government merely helps people become employable in a ruthless economy.(1)

The Compass pamphlet puts its finger on a crucial link between apathy and economic insecurity. And the answer? "A new politics and sense of collectivism. The objective is neither to retreat from globalisation nor to accommodate to it, but to find ways of offering democratic security and freedom: the 'new politics' New Labour promised but has not delivered."

Obviously, it's not all down to government. It is also down to individuals and pressure groups and communities. History teaches us that most progressive change comes from public pressure and collective struggle. As the election nears turn off Big Brother, put down the bottle, walk past the betting shop and start making changes to the world we live in. Here. And Now.

(1) Compass, Dare More Democracy, is published this month.

Melissa Benn is a journalist and novelist..