Every four or five years, the British public have the chance to take part in a great democratic festival. Excitement builds as the day approaches, when all the people of the land join together to decide the future of their beloved country. After the people fulfil their loyal duty, a huge fiesta begins, full of marching bands, tickertape and colourful balloons, celebrating the wonders of democracy, people power and self-rule.

Yeah, well, in reality it is not quite like that. Those of us with a sense of duty troop down to the local polling station on our way to, or from, work - if we can spare the time. The venue for this momentous decision is usually a run-down community centre, inside which we must squeeze into a chipboard cubbyhole, pick up a blunt pencil on a bit of string and plonk our cross next to the name of the person who may, or may not be, as bad as all the rest.

More than 60 per cent of 'can't-be-arsed Britain' participated in the election, but most did not care about it. On Sky News, they displayed an 'Interest Index', demonstrating the apathetic state of nation. It peaked at minus twenty one, meaning that those not interested in the election outnumbered those that were interested in it by more than twenty per cent. And that was on a good day.

But there is a lot to be said for a boring election. Remove the tedious politicians and what are you left with? For starters, George Galloway, the BNP, Robert Kilroy-Silk and the mad hatters of UKIP.

Society is large, complex and difficult to manage and so the simplicities suggested by such 'exciting' politicians and their headline-grabbing policies offer few answers to our problems. UKIP feel that pulling out of the European Union would be a cure-all; the BNP believe that ethnically pure countries magically fix themselves; Greens have faith that socialism will lead to environmental nirvana; George Galloway's ego will heal the world.

It would certainly be exciting if one of these parties took control, but that would be exciting in an adrenaline-pumping 'I'd like to leave the country using the fastest transport available' way. Across the world, exciting politics leads to conflicts erupting, dictators emerging and societies destroyed by corruption and violence. Bureaucratic, consensual politics is boring, and can be inefficient, but tends to serve most of the people rather than kill or starve them. Look at Canada.

A quick glance across the world and it is difficult to find a revolutionary place where it would be better to live than boring little Britain. The Cubans have a great healthcare system, lovely weather and friendly people, but you had better dump that cynical and outspoken attitude unless you have a penchant for a long stay in a shithole of a prison.

The Libyans enjoy the bizarre leadership of Colonel Gaddafi, but that is 'enjoy' in the sense that they have no political choices, live under the threat of the secret police and experience what Amnesty calls "widespread human rights violations".

By contrast, Britain has a sedate form of politics. Many of the country's political institutions date back centuries, often largely unchanged, and the central figure - the monarch - has ruled almost continuously for over a thousand years.

Since 1997, we have seen a wide range of structural changes to the British political system, including the near-abolition of hereditary peers, the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, as well as plans to create a new Supreme Court. However, such moves have barely registered on the populace's radar; they certainly have not led to a great surge of interest in domestic politics.

Maybe this is because there is no longer a large ideological divide between the two main parties. In the past, the gap between the Labour and Conservative parties' views created tension, excitement and full-blooded debate.

Across the country, many people were passionate about the merits of socialism versus capitalism, or vice versa. But passion, or even its milder cousin, enthusiasm, are hard to find today in debates about British politics, when many of the differences outside the foreign policy arena are about processes rather than principles. Should targets for local health authorities be set locally or nationally? Yawn. It's not exactly the type of question likely to lead to fierce debates in the pub on a Friday night.

But did we gain from the political enthusiasm of the past? While we may have felt engaged in policy, and had greater respect for our politicians, did that feed through into politicians making better decisions?

Maybe not. In the second half of the twentieth century, many British politicians got into power only to lead us down a series of poorly-chosen paths.

Economic policy was particularly bad. British industry collapsed under policies designed by flip-flopping, inconsistent, short-termist and rather dim politicians and senior civil servants. Rhetoric and grandiose ideology only served to paper over the cracks of politicians' rank incompetence.

In the 1950s and 1960s, they lauded the atomic age, then wasted decades and tens of billions of pounds on nuclear power before belatedly realising it had been largely pointless. Today we are paying a huge price, both economically and environmentally, for their poor decision-making. Then there was Concorde, a beautiful dream pushed through by Tony Benn, but, in the end, it was little more than an expensive fantasy.

Today we have boring politicians. In an alternative universe, our political leaders would have senior middle management positions in large-ish corporations, attending meetings all day and feeling rather grand about the rather minor decisions they make.

In our world, these rather staid individuals have made their way to the top of the political ladder. A combination of seething ambition, a lack of competition and a bucket load of luck bringing them power over the biggest and most powerful institution of all: the state.

But, with the reins of power in their hands, they have little vision. And when they do have ambitious goals, such as New Labour's aim to eradicate child poverty, these are barely mentioned for fear of scaring the conservative media.

At least present-day politicians know what the word 'research' means. Under Blair, Downing Street has become the most influential social sciences department in the country. The outgoing head of the Policy Unit at Number 10, Geoff Mulgan, is a tough-minded and practical intellectual. Under him, policy-making became a little more grown up, more grounded, more relevant. Not great, but better.

One of my heroes is Bob Holman. For the last 30 years, this academic has lived in some of the roughest council estates in the country - at present, Easterhouse in Glasgow - helping the local communities and writing about what needs to be done.

You will not find Holman playing the gesture politics of much of the Left, with its veneration of Noam Chomsky and symbolic and ineffectual boycotts of Israel, or joining the vapid and opportunistic rhetoric of the Right in their whinging about civil liberties, which they have no intention of defending. Instead, Holman is there on the ground, pushing for micro-projects, proper community empowerment and better central government policy.

The war in Iraq may have been a severe error of judgement, but one foreign policy is not the sum total of the Blair government's actions. This is something many voters in the general election appear to have understood, at least subliminally. They gave only one cheer to the eye-catching but often ill-thought-out proposals of the Conservatives and LibDems, while rejecting outright the quacks and extremists on the left and right, George Galloway and the occasional vote for the BNP being the exceptions.

Politics makes a difference and is important, but rarely is the most significant stuff simple to understand. For example, finance runs much of the world, but how many people can explain why the policies of the US Federal Reserve are important to British people's employment prospects?

Most politics is difficult to generalise; often, what works here will not work there. Sometimes privatisation is a good idea - why should the state build cars? - other times, as with the BBC, state provision does seem to fill a gap that the market would not.

In an ideal world, we would have visionary and ideologically-fuelled leaders advocating detailed, high-quality politics that fire the people's imagination. Unfortunately, in recent years, we have had to choose between the two. In 2001 and 2005, Britain opted for boring and rejected exciting. There was some sense in that.