It's The Policies That Are Important

In Brecon & Radnorshire we have eight candidates: Christian Party, Conservative, Green, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Monster Raving Loony, Plaid Cymru and UKIP. I will be voting Liberal Democrat, as I have done in every election since I turned 18, and tomorrow I will do so with even greater conviction.

The Christian Party can be rejected fairly easily, I don’t want to see a return of corporal punishment in schools, it is brutal and barbaric, and I don’t want creationism taught in state schools, in fact I really want faith schools taken out of the state education system. So, “No” to the Christian Party.

I don’t think I have ever been tempted to vote Conservative, for me it is a matter of trust, and I simply don’t trust the Conservatives. So quite apart from their lowering of Inheritance Tax for their wealthy friends, their absurd position on everything to do with Europe, their many U-turns on the economy and their affection for an outdated and blatantly unfair electoral system, I would find it very difficult to even consider voting Conservative.

Labour is, well, Labour not so much New as shop-soiled and clapped out. What can I say? Thirteen years of disappointment including taking Britain into an illegal war in Iraq, failure to place Britain at the heart of Europe and perhaps the most damning of all, encouraging the unrestricted access to credit and thereby fuelling the “have now, pay later” seduction of the British people, and this from a man who, as Chancellor, promoted a reputation for prudence and as Prime Minister has been anything but prudent. No, I have never voted Labour before and I certainly couldn’t do so now, their claims to be progressive ring so hollow.

Plaid, are quite irrelevant in a Westminster election and no matter how hard they try to make us forget it, there are fundamentally nationalist. So whenever I think about Plaid, I am reminded of what A C Grayling says about nationalism in his book: The Meaning of Things.

"Nationalism is evil. It causes wars, its roots lie in xenophobia and racism, it is a recent phenomenon – an invention of the last few centuries – which has been of immense service to demagogues and tyrants but to no one else. Disguised as patriotism and love of one’s country, it trades on the unreason of mass psychology to make a variety of horrors seem acceptable, even honourable…"

UKIP seems to me to have all the attributes of little Englander nationalism but applied to the United Kingdom as a whole rather than simply to Wales and I reject it for the same reasons that I reject Plaid.

The Monster Raving Loony Party, as its name suggests, is not to be taken seriously, its only purpose is to make elections marginally more interesting, sometimes it succeeds, mostly it doesn’t. We all love them but we would never dream of voting for them.

The Green Party has some attractive policies, mainly to do with the environment, and therein lies the rub. There is so much more to the governance of Britain than the environment. There may be a feelgood factor in voting Green, but ultimately that is to give pre-eminence to the environment over all other issues, and I am not yet ready to do that.

So tomorrow, I shall be voting Liberal Democrat, sincerely hoping for serious and meaningful electoral reform, open and genuine debate about the European Union, a sensible reform of the tax system and the recreation of a genuinely mixed economy where there is collective provision of essential services – health, defence, security, education, etc – and competitive provision of goods and services where competition works to lower prices and generate normal profits. It is a difficult balance to achieve but one that is ultimately more efficient than the monopoly of the state and the chaos of the unfettered free market. Above all, I am hoping for an end to the two party system characterised by its subservience to a rampant and insidious media owned by a few precious individuals who seem able to manipulate both Labour or Conservative governments to their own advantage.