Are you bored with this election yet? Here we are in mid-June and July 4 still seems a long, long way away. Is anything going to change between now and then? Are you still undecided about who you will vote for?

Actually, I am. (But if you’re a Tory I wouldn’t get your hopes up.) Even so, I’ve found myself skipping the news of late, mostly because I don’t want to hear more of the pantomime conversations we get at this time in the political cycle.

The “he said, she said” back-and-forth that makes up so much of election coverage. The constant need for reaction to the latest faux pas or policy statement. (Though, to be fair, Rishi Sunak’s woeful campaign has been wonderfully content-rich for the media.) The likely possibility that I will have to listen to Nigel Farage at some point. On the whole, I’ve been sticking to 6 Music of late.

So kudos at least to Understand - The UK Election on Radio 4 which all this week has attempted to get beyond the rush and pull of the day-to-day election coverage. Presented by Newscast’s Adam Fleming, these snappy 15-minute broadcasts spent Monday to Friday asking questions like, “what difference does a manifesto make?’ Or, on Thursday, “why do people vote the way they do?”

This, then, was a programme that took a step back and tried to see the bigger picture. Fair play. But the result was probably best enjoyed by policy wonks. There was an implicit feeling that those behind it felt they knew what was really going on and they were all high on their own insideriness.

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In other words, it was Westminster bubble stuff. Politics as gamesmanship, as number crunching, as clever dickery. There wasn’t much sense that anyone here was that interested in how politics might change the lives of people who are not standing for election, which is surely the point.

That’s not to say it wasn’t interesting.

On Monday’s programme John McTernan, formerly Tony Blair’s political secretary, and Lee Cain who worked with Boris Johnson (urggh) as Downing Street Director of Communications discussed how political parties campaigned. They spoke about the increasing importance of data harvesting, which made them sound like a pair of tech bros or maybe hipster football commentators.

On Friday's programme - How do you make sure voting runs smoothly? - Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, revealed that there will be some 40,000 polling stations (or thereabouts) in the UK come July 4, with 160,000 people working in them. He also pointed out that there are approximately eight million people in the UK not registered to vote, which, if my dodgy maths is right, is just under one in nine of the population. That’s quite a lot of disenfranchisement going on.

But maybe it’s to be expected. “The thing I always say about politics, we’re obsessed with it,” John McTernan pointed out to Cain and Fleming on Monday, speaking for himself and his audience of two.

By contrast, he added the average punter thinks about politics for nine minutes a week. “They’re not paying any attention.”

Norway raised more tax per barrel than the UKNorway raised more tax per barrel than the UK (Image: free)

Radio 4’s Start the Week on Monday also ventured into the political realm as development economist Paul Collier took no prisoners on the subject of Tory claims of levelling up.

“I was an official advisor - without being paid - for all this levelling up,” he told presenter Tom Sutcliffe. “I realised it was a complete joke. It was theatre. It was the appearance of levelling up, but nothing was done.”

According to Collier, Britain’s problems can be easily explained. “Britain is the most exceptionally highly centralised country in the OECD … And that’s the heart of our problem,” he argued. The answer was more devolution, not less, he added.

“You appear to dislike the Treasury almost as much as Liz Truss does,” Sutcliffe suggested to him at one point. Because it has too much power, Collier said. And, also because it wasn’t very good at its job.

The economist used North Sea oil as evidence. Tax revenue collected by Norway averaged out at $33 per barrel, he explained. The UK raised only $11 per barrel.

“This is extraordinarily idiotic,” Collier said. “And don’t forget trying to raise tax is something where the Treasury is really, really trying. Trying to level up the country, it’s not even trying.”

I love the smell of righteous fury on a Monday morning.

Listen Out For:

This Cultural Life, Radio 4, Thursday, 11am John Wilson’s guest this week is none other than Salman Rushdie who will also be appearing at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival.