Election day, 7th May 2015. I've been thinking a lot about how to vote. In almost all of the elections I've voted in since turning eighteen in 1988 I've voted Labour. Like many people the Labour party haven't endeared themselves to me quite as much in recent times. I'm pretty envious of our Scottish friends who have an actual, meaningful alternative to voting Labour in the shape of the SNP, and the same is true in Wales. I would like to vote for a left wing political party- a party who put social justice above narrow personal self interest, who aren't contributing to paranoid, stoked up fears about immigration, who will fund the NHS and who will support those less well off. You could suggest at this point that this option does exist for me and that I should vote Green. Which has crossed my mind. However I think when I go to the polling booth tonight I shall mark my cross against the name of the Labour party candidate. The bottom line, to my mind, has to be to get rid of the Tories, to vote this shower of shits out of office and I think that voting Labour is the most effective way to do that.
That brings up the dangerous question of voting Lib Dem tactically (and we can all see where that got us last time- the Lib Dems propping up a nasty right wing clique of bankers and ex-public school boys). Fortunately not a problem round here, the Lib Dems trail well off in third but some people may have to make that choice.
In 1997 after nearly twenty years of Conservative government the Labour party had the wind behind them and optimism in front of them. They appropriated D Ream's pop-house anthem Things Can Only Get Better. I quite liked it until that point. Right now, I'm not sure if things can only get better but if we get five more years of what we've just had then things will get a lot worse.
David Cameron (part time punk, Eton mod and class warrior) has stated before that The Eton Rifles is one of his favourite songs. Eton Rifles is a bile-fuelled invective against public school boys (from Cameron's old school) spitting and jeering at unemployed miners marching from Jarrow to London set to a piledriving post punk tune. As Paul Weller said 'which part of it didn't he get?'
Live on Something Else in 1979 (the same episode Joy Division were on).
Thankfully I don't have to consider the option of voting tactically either, as it's a non-starter round these parts. So, unfortunately, is my first choice. I fear the worst.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Adam, as you rightly out at least here in Scotland we have a meaningful alternative. If I was voting in England I would be making the same choice as yourself.
ReplyDeleteWell said Adam, but I have a really terrible feeling those right wing scumbags, and I include the LibDems in that, will get in for 5 more years. And that will have catastrophic implications for the Great Britain and it's constituent nations. Cracking SuperFurryAnimals tune yesterday.
ReplyDeleteAs Scott said SA
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