But when it comes to core issues, which are more or less the same as the ones in the US - health care and education, economic policy, foreign policy - ordinary people are completely disenfranchised.

We aren't given the choice to vote for populist, bottom-up policies. The rules are set by Big Money, Big Oil, and Big Death, and they're the ones who are steering the ship.

We're allowed to rearrange the deck chairs. But we're not allowed to avoid the rocks or join the pillage party in the big ballroom.

Bill Wyatt is a liberal Republican and was a candidate for the U.S. Republican Party presidential nomination, 2004. He is a 43-year-old T-shirt maker and father of three from California. Wyatt left the Democratic Party to become a Republican after Democrats voted for the war in Iraq, an action he saw as a betrayal. He hopes to have a greater voice as a member of the Republican Party.

Wyatt has traveled 12,000 miles and spent an estimated $20,000 on his Presidential campaign. He managed to qualify for ballot status in New Hampshire, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, and even the Democratic Primary ballot in Arizona.

His early showings were disheartening but not surprising. He finished tenth in the New Hampshire primary with 0.23% of the vote (153 votes).

However, a major upset occurred on Mini-Tuesday when Wyatt won just over 10% of the vote in Oklahoma. He also placed second in Missouri, where he gained 1,268 votes (1.03%). Wyatt also received 233 votes (0.10%) in the Arizona Democratic primary.

Wyatt has stated that the Louisiana primary was his last stand, since it was the final state where he qualified for ballot status. He gained 4% of the vote there, which he considered a symbolic victory against George W. Bush that sent a message to the Republican Party. Wyatt has declared that he will be a candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

What was particulary interesting was his failed attempts to get on the primary ballots in the first place. The reason he ran in the Arizona Democratic primary was that the republican was cancelled because of lack of other candidates then Bush. That he was a republican and wanted to participated did not matter (this was also the case in a number of other states). So he ran in the Arizona Democratic primary to get more votes then Bush in Arizona.

To be a candidate for the presidency in the US you apparently have to be a candidate accepted by the media or have enough money to be buy media time. As a comparision: to be a candidate for the presidency of Iran you have to be acceptable to a group of mullahs (or possibly buy their acceptance).

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Independents often stand and occasionally win. One of the best moments of the last election was watching the father of someone who died in Iraq laying into Blair in public on election night, because he'd stood as an independent in Blair's constituency and won a good proportion of the votes.

But generally it's the party machine that keeps things running, and parties are very definitely run top-down - to the extent that Westminster is almost irrelevant anyway.

I think in the US the barriers to enter a party's primary are as low as simply having to change your partisan voter registration.

Yes, compare Michael Bloomberg (mayor of New York, and this week's media fascination as he coyly denies that he's running for President). Since he couldn't win the mayoral primary in his own party (the Democrats), he registered Republican and won that way. (At least that's how Newsweek reports it.) This is not seen as unfair, just unusual; it's up to the primary voters to decide whether they accept it.