On the marginals of society
May 5th, 2010 by handolio
What it is about me and marginal constituencies? Between elections I’ve moved from Guildford (Con majority 347) to Hove (Lab majority 420).
Back in Guildford it was an easy choice. In 2005 the incumbent MP was Sue Doughty; a Lib Dem who I’d voted for in 2001 and whose policies strongly reflected my beliefs – particularly in her opposition to the war in Iraq. She lost to shadow health minister Anne Milton, whose chief distinctions are to vote against gay rights and yet look like Julian Clary.
In Hove it’s a two-horse race between Tory Mike Weatherley and Labour MP Celia Barlow.
Stonewall research shows that Celia has a great voting record on lesbian, gay and bisexual equality issues, but a look at her entry on They Work For You reveals an MP who has also never voted against the Labour whip.
This means that Celia:
-Voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.
-Voted very strongly for allowing ministers to intervene in inquests.
-Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.
-Voted very strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
-Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.
-Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards.
So why would I vote tomorrow for a Labour candidate with whom I utterly disagree on some of the most important issues of the day?
I’m not sure that I can, but our electoral system is fucked: the alternative may be seeing the Conservatives come back into power – and knowing that I’m one of the few thousand people in perhaps 20 constituencies who could have done something to stop it.
Find out the importance of your vote at voterpower.org.uk
GRAPHICS: both from BBC News
I wonder though how much swing there will be in this area to Lib Dems? A city with a very high proportion of “young” people and families, who (hopefully) have followed the debates and are perhaps the ideal people to be swung towards the lib dems – perhaps we’ll see a significant swing from the 2005 results. I’ve not seen any forecasts for this area based on anything other than the last election results and (probably naively) I hope that things will have changed.
That could all just be naive hope though, based on the fact that I can’t bring myself to vote labour, even if it is to keep the tories out.
But if we assume the Lib Dems need something like 16,000 votes to win in Hove, that’s twice what they got last time.* Isn’t that unprecedented?
It’s probably not impossible. I’d wager there are at least four or five thousand people who are only voting Tory to keep Labour out and vice-versa. If they all took the plunge and voted Lib Dem it could be enough, but it would rely on everyone doing it.
The risk of everyone saying they’ll do it, then not doing it is that the status quo is maintained *and* everyone who decided not to vote tactically feels that they wasted their vote.
*I was going to work out the swing, but it looks hard.
The way i’m looking at it is even if my vote is “wasted”, in that tories/labour get in again, at least my vote counted towards the % of the vote that went lib dem nationally – hopefully giving them more weight to bargain should we get a hung parliament.
Plus, in all honesty, I just don’t feel that there is much between labour and the tories in terms of awfulness; they’re just awful in different ways. I think the tories would be more damaging economically (hugely so), but I have grave concerns about the state of civil liberties in this country under labour and the long term ramifications of that can’t be underestimated…
The really stupid thing is that for all my trumpeting of the Lib Dems, they are still just the least worst for me – i’m very much a leftie and none of the three main parties actually has left wing policies anymore. They all want PFI and increased business participation in schools etc. But I can’t imagine ever voting Tory and after the huge disappointment that has been the Labour government (an illegal war, tuition fees, PFI, massive loss of civil liberties etc) I don’t feel I have any option but the Lib Dems now.
I find the whole thing unbelievably depressing. And now i’m going to go read the Private Eye election special, so I’ll probably be even more depressed soon…
Oh God. I just had an hour-long debate about it with Scott, and I still can’t say for sure who I’m voting for.
Fucksake.