“There was a time when elections at least seemed to mean something… I admit that, emotionally and unthinkingly, I will find myself supporting the 'left' parties when the results come in tomorrow night… But only in exactly the same way that I want to see X contestant beat Y contestant in Big Brother; it really is only sentimentality to pretend that this spectacle has much consequence.” While television was becoming more participatory, politics was increasingly becoming – as the political scientist Peter Mair noted the following year – a “spectator sport”, “part of an external world which people watch from the outside” rather than belong to and engage in. Across Western democracies, citizens were withdrawing from the political arena: turnout fell, voting became more volatile, party memberships declined. Party democracy, Mair argued, was turning into “audience democracy”.