Right off the bat I want to make one thing clear about this post. I am not trying to persuade any of you of which way to vote. This is me working out who *I* should vote for in the upcoming UK general election.
The other big issues how to go about talking about my constituency, because doing so would reveal where I live which I don’t want to do. But then talking about my specific constituency and the candidates I will be choosing between is the core issue.
Let me break it down this way. My constituency is one of many that makes up the so called ‘blue wall‘, a swathe of seats that have consistently voted for the Conservative party for many, many years. My constituency has been held by the Conservatives for over 100 years. It’s such a safe seat, the previous MP held a high ranking job in the government for many years.
No doubt because they worked their way up and earned those positions, but also somewhat because they had a safe seat and were not at risk of suddenly being voted out, as like what happened to a senior Labour Party MP who suddenly lost his seat in an election. Not sure if it was some level of complacency or what, but it was a reminder that it can happen.
For many years the main opposition to the ruling Conservatives in Parliament have been the Labour party, who as of writing have a significant lead in the polls. In my constituency though, the main opposition has been the Liberal Democrats. Labour have always been a 3rd place option here. This year is different though. Labour are polling ahead of the Conservatives. It’s a slim margin, but it would be a win for them.
The thing is though, the Labour candidate looks to be…. questionable? Not necessarily in a bad way, more in a ‘meh’ way? They basically seem to be coasting on the fact that Labour has a lead, and parroting the main talking points the national labour party are. They aren’t saying what they would be doing for us in our constituency.
On the other hand, the incumbent MP has focused their campaign on what they have already done to address the issues that are effecting us and what they would like to do if re-elected. Granted some of those ideas are just wishful thinking that realistically they can’t
While I just wrote off the Liberal Democrats in our area, their candidate has been the Lib-Dem candidate for the last few elections. They too can cite their own work in local government and what they have done.
The Labour candidate? She’s a mum and local business owner.
Neither of those things are inherently bad qualities for someone, but only one of those is somewhat relevant to being an MP.
Which means my three choices boil down to:
- The incumbent conservative MP, who I disagree with politically but at least has a record of occasionally trying to vote for local interests;
- The Labour candidate who isn’t offering us anything beyond “I’m a local mum“. The party she is representing though, is one of the ones I agree with most;
- The Liberal Democrat candidate who has no hope of winning, but is also one of the parties I agree with.
I suppose here is a good point to talk address which parties I lean towards. Last year I wrote up a page on ‘My Political Stances‘, which I took an online quiz to see which parties I align with most.
Well, I just took the test again and the results were a little different from last year, but on the whole similar enough. The only major difference was the fact that last years results only featured the largest 5 political parties. These results shows a lot more:
Interestingly, the site now has an ‘election’ tab, which ranked the candidates in my area according to how well they matched my values. Though some of that interest was the fact it automatically knew my location despite me blocking location tracking, but that’s another issue.
I won’t share the screenshot because the showing the names of the candidates would reveal my constituency by proxy, so instead I’ll just share the percentage scores:
- The incumbent conservative MP – 70%
- The Labour candidate – 90%
- The Liberal Democrat candidate – 87%
- I should add there are actually 5 candidates in my area, but the site didn’t list a percentage score for the other 2 because they are “currently researching this candidate’s stances“, but given the other 2 candidates are for minor parties I wouldn’t consider anyway, I’ll not worry about them.
Now that test was such a long one, I’ve actually had time to think.
I’ve been trying to weigh up the idea of local issues vs national issues. Making the assumption that they won the election and became our MP, trying to work out how often they would vote along party lines regardless of how it effects us locally, and I think the answer is pretty clear.
They all would.
None of them are independent candidates. They are all tied to a party, and would be subject to disciplinary action by so called “party whips” to vote a certain way. Frankly it feels like we would be lucky if any of the candidates would vote in out interests on local issues. It doesn’t matter what the candidates say they’ll do, because if the voting record of the incumbent is evidence of anything, it’s that party whips control votes more than the MP’s themselves.
Logically it seems the best option is to vote according to party policies, and I’ve already looked at their manifesto’s and taken the above linked test, and for me at least the answer is clear.
Now short of either the labour candidate being revealed to be a horrible person, or the party pledging to do something horrible, right now my vote is going to the Labour Party.
Again, I’m not here to convince you to vote for any specific party. This post has been for me to work out who *I* should vote for. That said, I would still encourage everyone who can to vote.
Talking to a Void called 'the Internet' 