The X factor

EMILY Christer was tickled pink last week when she was recognised in McDonalds.

The new youth MP for Darlington says: "They said to me, are you the Mayor?

And I said no, and they said they'd seen me in the paper. Then they started telling me that they needed more bins in their area."

You wouldn't look at Emily and think "politician" - and so much the better.

Now just embarking on her GCSEs, she was voted in as Youth MP for Darlington earlier this year. Her campaign was far from the traditional electioneering.

Instead, she made 500 Rice Krispies cakes and handed them out around her school, Hummersknott in Darlington.

"It wasn't bribery or anything," says 16-year-old Emily. "It was just a bit different and it meant people were aware of my campaign and it gave me a chance to speak to them.

"Other candidates had a massive poster campaign, and took a very serious, grown-up approach to it all. But a poster campaign wasn't really me. I didn't want to come across as a boring politician."

Instead Emily, who hopes to be a political journalist, tapped straight into her peer network by using MSN and MySpace to do her campaigning.

"I had a massive list of 100 things that young people might want, and I got people to vote for five which they thought were important. Then I put them in my manifesto."

The UK Youth Parliament is all about getting youngsters more interested in the whole political and decision-making process, in the hope this might, in the future, increase voter turnout. Local elections, in particular, suffer from a low turnout, usually not creeping above 40 per cent, and tomorrow's council elections are not expected to be any different. So engaging young people is crucial.

"Many young people are scared by the word "politics","

says Youth Parliament chief executive Andy Hamflett.

"We don't really use the word politics, we'd rather talk about change. If you look at all the coverage of politics, even people who have been studying it for years, right now it is difficult to spot the differences between the parties.

"Many of the people who don't vote, say it is because they don't really know what they are voting for. But it doesn't mean they don't care what is happening in their area, because they do."

The Youth Parliament has been going for eight years and is starting to make a difference in the corridors of power. Campaigns the MYPs (Members of Youth Parliament) have been running about sexual health education has led to a Government review - which will be co-chaired by an MYP.

And on Friday, 300 MYPs from across the UK will descend on the House of Lords to debate national issues, which will be screened on BBC Parliament, and streamed to the main news channels.

Eighteen-year-old Joe Kirwin, of Stanhope, has been interested in politics since he was 12, when the council refused to mow his grandmother's lawn.

He had hoped to stand as an independent candidate in the local elections tomorrow, but was told he was ten days too young to be nominated, as he only turned 18 this month.

A Labour party member, he says: "My friends did think I was a bit weird when I got involved in politics.

But what I have really enjoyed is that now people come to me and ask questions. It gives me great pleasure to get young people more and more involved.

"It is very difficult to get them involved. But I think you just have to make it real for them, make them realise that the decisions that are made effect their everyday life.

"The problem is, it is actually very difficult for anyone to get involved in politics. You can join a political party, but where I live there is no organised Labour party so it is very difficult for someone like me to stay in contact and involved.

"Hilary Armstrong came to our school, but she only spoke to the politics students. Really she should have spoken to all the students."

JOE, who is taking his A-levels at Wolsingham School this summer before going on to study European Politics at university, has tried to get politics more on the agenda in Citizenship lessons at his school, but teachers are hard-pressed to squeeze everything on to the curriculum.

"We do need to get more political education in schools," he says. "When I hear people of A-level age say Who is the Prime Minister? Is it still that Tony Blair dude or did he hand over to Gordon Brown?' it makes me despair."

Emily feels young people are not well informed about politics because political TV programmes are on late at night and are aimed at an older audience.

She admits that she is not party-political. "I used to support the Lib Dems, just because I felt sorry for them because they didn't get many votes," she says. "But then as I became more aware of politics I realised that was very naïve. I am just in the middle really."

Joe, on the other hand, believes that Punch and Judy' politics is to be encouraged because it makes the whole process more interesting.

"I think a good debate is crucial," he says. "We have too many nice, centre ground politicians. But if you look back at history, we were at our most political when we had strong parties with differing views."