It’s that time again when the British people are subjected to an endless media barrage of propaganda, lies, smear campaigns, empty promises and images of politicians pretending to represent their constituencies. In other words, business as usual, or the lead up to a General Election. For some reason, we’re then meant to disregard the behaviours of our government since the last election and believe what they tell us now. Hrm…
The problem, I think, is that there is little to distinguish the parties, beyond their stance on Brexit, and while I appreciate the importance of this issue, it cannot be the whole platform on which to determine a government which we may need to live with for the next five years. There must be more, there must.
So what do we have to choose from? Well, to start, the incumbents, the Tories. They’re supposedly the centre-right party for business, with an emphasis on the economy. However, in recent years they’ve been drifting further and further to the right, and have abandoned their pro-business stance in favour of a “Take Back Control” platform which seems to be leading the country into becoming a tax-haven for the super-rich, with nothing for those who can’t keep up. They have an unpopular (and unelected) clown of a leader who can barely speak the language without resort to mumbling. They are – or at least their leadership is – pro-Brexit.
Pitted against them is the left-leaning Labour Party. These too have been drifting right for so long that now they have a more-or-less centre-left leader, he’s seen as an extremist by the mass media. Of course, said media are afraid of socialism in any form, no matter how slight, since they – for the most part – enjoy the tax-benefits of the Tories. Of course, Labour have issues too, most notably accusations of antisemitism, but with the Tories having the same with anti-muslim leanings and the Lib Dems and Greens with anti-LGBT+ problems, then how are we to choose? Labour’s stance on Brexit isn’t entirely clear. Their leader seems to want it but on his own terms, and is willing to ask the country in a new referendum, which is nice.
In the middle of these, we have those Liberal Democrats. Famous for sitting on fences, and being unable to make a decision, they are also struggling to cast off the stigma of their last taste of power when they colluded with the Tories to pillage the country’s education system. Sure they got richer but lost a lot of their younger support, especially among the students they’d just betrayed. Other than their staunch anti-Brexit stance, we know little of the truth behind their current campaign. They refuse to work with Labour, which effectively means (since they don’t have enough people to form a government alone) that every vote for them is a vote for the Tories by proxy. They also claim, loudly, to be much better than the big two, but have plenty of issues of their own to sort out. It’s a shame because they have a lot of potential otherwise – if they can decide what to do with it.
After these, we have the smaller and local parties. The Scottish and Welsh nationalists have their own agendas of course. Both seem to be anti-Brexit on the surface, but of course, being nationalist parties, their views are subject to local whim. They seem to be able to co-operate with others well enough though, which is good, and of course, irrelevant unless you live in their area. Their Northern Irish equivalent, the DUP is more um… intransigent and are pro-Brexit, I think, I’m not entirely sure. Of the others, the Greens have the problem of nobody knowing what they stand for, though they have voted constantly against Brexit, as have the TIGfC. Conversely, the Brexit party are, well the clue is in the name.
And so there we have my summary. There’s not a single politician worthy of a vote, let alone a party, and yet we have to vote for someone on December 12th. I’m leaning left at the moment, and will probably cast my vote for Labour, as you can probably tell from my writing, although everything can change in the next month. I feel we need a change from the incumbent, and only Labour can accomplish this as things stand now.
Unfortunately, the voting system won’t change unless the Lib Dems win, which they can’t unless the voting system changes. Of course, their attitude needs to change too, but baby steps, eh.
I feel dirty now!