Politics

Tony is going! Okay, not yet, but he is going. I wish I had the foggiest idea whether this is good or not, all I have is probably a media-fuelled view that he’s only out for his own glory. It brings me back to the question I had to ask myself only 18 months ago – what exactly are my political views? I know where I stand on most things, but despite being one of the few people (40%) in this country who bothers to go and vote (use it or lose it – women died to give me the right to vote…) I still don’t actually know which of the parties I am closest to. I have always had fairly strong views, though I never understood the whole right/left wing thing. So, today, I looked it up online. Sadly, all I could find on the three main parties’ homepages were ‘funny’ pictures of the current leader, and of the leader of the opposition. Lots of “they’re worse than us” type things but no real help for me. After much searching, however, I managed to find the election manifesto for the conservatives from 2005. I couldn’t open it to have a look at it though – could be the PCs at work don’t have the right stuff. Then I found Who Should You Vote For? so I went there. I think it’s a bit out of date there too, as all of the parties have changed or added to their policies, and also two have new leaders (and the other is to have a new leader soon) so… Still I did the quiz.

Who should I vote for? v2

Your expected outcome:

Unknown

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 1
Conservative -2
	Liberal Democrat 35
	UKIP 14
	Green 60

You should vote: Green

The Green Party, which is of course strong on environmental issues, takes a strong position on welfare issues, but was firmly against the war in Iraq. Other key concerns are cannabis, where the party takes a liberal line, and foxhunting, which unsurprisingly the Greens are firmly against. The Greens are also anti-Europe. So, there you go – I'm Green, apparently. The trouble is, the two parties I seem to share the most views with are not likely to get power. What I would prefer would be a way of saying "okay, I think that old people deserve free buses, but that's not the most important policy to me, I'm much more interested in the tax and employment policies and the parties' stances on unmarried couples." And then do the quiz. I suspect that my result would be different…