It’s no secret that people aren’t massively happy with the Tories at the moment, and the same goes for Boris Johnson, the arguably loveable but go-to-guy for his gaffes in a long political career. For any Americans reading and wondering who he is, he’s our Joe Biden.

With the mayoral elections for London just over two weeks away, it’s going to be interesting to see what punches former mayor and Labour candidate Ken Livingstone will be packing. However, the most interesting candidate is the independent Siobhan Benita, who, while rejected completely by pretty much everyone, shows a step in the right direction and maybe a sign of things to come when Westminster descends into madness in 2015.

Independent candidates usually stand no chance. But Mrs Benita is far from a novelty act, even if there is little chance of her taking office on 3^rd May.

Her website details her plans for our great capital. (http://siobhanformayor.com/index.html). She wants to make education a priority, improve the transport network, increase opportunities for people and businesses, and build better and safer neighbourhoods. All of which London, nay every city is in dire need of during a crippling recession.

She markets herself in a very simple, but effective way. She’s not a stuffy old-timer or a young buck. She’s a mum who used to work in Whitehall before resigning to run for office. She’s lived in London all her life, and has worked “at the heart of the civil service for 15 years.”

Now some of you spluttering into your cups of tea saying that you need to have some form of allegiance to a political party to run need to get with the times. I firmly believe that none of us should be tied down to party allegiance, as we’ve been let down too many times. Politicians are out of touch with the public and still reeling from the expenses scandal of 2009.

While I personally wouldn’t vote for her, I also believe that voting for Mrs Benita would not be a wasted vote, unlike every other time someone has voted for an independent. Before, the political system zigzagged from Labour to Conservative. Now, at a time when more people than ever are disengaged by choice from Politics and its attempts to repair their profession, independent candidates stand more of a chance than ever before. People really are open minded. Look at the last General Election when the New Millenium Bean Party put up their only candidate, Captain Beany, who managed to get 1.8% of the vote in his constituency of Aberavon. This was more than the UKIP representative Joe Callan.

With the Coalition facing backlash after backlash and Labour seemingly in choppy waters over their choice of leader and his ability to actually lead, it’s not out of the question for an independent to do much better than previously forecasted.

And after Ken Livingstone’s stunt where he cried as “ordinary Londoners” read from a script just shows that Politics really is in dark times. He’d already seen that broadcast once, although those tears would make a soap actress look inadequate. I mean, we knew these things were staged, but that was pathetic, not to mention Milliband’s “pat on the back in comfort.” And who could forget Boris Johnson’s use of the Mayor of London Twitter account to advertise his re-election bid. These are supposed to be the two leading men for this job, but I’d be hard pushed to vote for them on the back of those incidents. 

Of course, the Mayor elections and the General Election don’t represent the same cause as the candidates don’t run as party representatives. However, they are influenced by their party in more ways than not, and I believe that independent candidates stand a better chance than they ever have before, even if it would take some sort of miracle for one to be elected.

Time will of course tell, but I believe that after George Galloway’s victory for RESPECT in Bradford, it has shown us that the big parties don’t always win and it isn’t a forgone conclusion. Just look at how much more support the Lib Dems managed to gain in the last General Election. No-one actually believed they could get into gov’t, but one way or another they did. And while I personally find Galloway to be a joke with an unfunny punch-line, he has shown that the times are a’changin in UK politics.