nourishing obscurity

Did your Poll Card arrive yesterday? Ours did and in the same mail came a letter in an envelope from our Independent.

I decided to phone him and ask him the Albion Alliance question, to which he replied he would most certainly support a referendum, were he elected. Not only that, there’d be no whip to stop him.

That’s the point where I said bye bye to the Tory Party. Big deal, you might say but for me that was an immense wrench. You see, I was a Tory by nature, by lifestyle, by socio-economic background and at the Conference last year, I have to admit it felt right at home.

Now, people such as Dizzy, Steve Green, Ellee, Donal Blaney, Letters from a Tory, Man in a Shed and so on will most likely never speak with me again. To them, the writing would have been on the wall anyway and Tory bloggers have been shunning this blog for some time but I was still trying to find a way to keep voting Tory until yesterday.

Suddenly, it all came to me in a flash – why should I feel guilty about what Cameron has forced on the party and its supporters? I’m a voter, an elector and it’s their job to garner my vote, not for me to toe any party line, on pain of excommunication. To hell with it.

As I went through this Independent’s blurb, it actually looked quite good. He answered the question: “Why should I vote for an Independent?” this way:

The reality is that, as an Independent, I have no Party Whip, which frees me to vote for issues which will help our constituency and against those which won’t. In a hung Pariament, I may be the one vote the Government needs to pass a Bill, therefore placing me in an influential position. My support can never be taken for granted by the major parties.

Well, he’s not entirely right there. I glanced at his policies and they were basically what we’re all banging on about at the moment, which puts him from centre-left to centre-right across the issues. Hey, I can live with that because he’s going to judge on the issue or rather, as he says:

If elected, I will be your representative in Westminster, not the Party’s representative in this constituency.

He’ll have a local office, I know where he lives and I have his phone and email. In short, he’s not going to spin me BS if I visit. Not only that, the idea that he can’t influence policy if he’s not “of the party” has been shown to be patently false anyway – none in the Tory Party can influence policy, they can only lose the Whip or lose their pre-selection if they don’t fall in line with policies they were never asked about.

Sorry but all parties can go and take a running jump.

I want to see Independents, with roughly our beliefs, dotted about through Parliament. That possibly won’t happen this time around but it sure is going to be a popular option once the second election comes up later in the year. Far from being a wasted vote, it’s going to keep the bastards honest.

Now, this Independent pointed out that the Tory in this constituency is a pro-EU stooge of Dave’s, which I already knew but he acknowledged the UKIP man had similar policies to mine. Well, I have only one thing to say to that. I’ve tried a few times to get to Mr. UKIP to talk, I asked a branch chairman to get me into contact, it was promised – it never happened.

Stuff UKIP if they’re going to treat potential voters this way.

I say stuff all parties and in each constituency, let’s put in only a PPC who is going to respond to his constituents and will heed what people say on policy. This Independent told me of the hustings this Friday where all but the Big Three are excluded [though the Lib-Dems are nowhere in our area, the Tory does not live in the area and Labour is disgraced].

He asked me, “Now does that sound democratic to you?”  He by the way, grew up in the area, was a councillor here and former Conservative candidate.

No, sir, it sounds anything but democratic. In fact it stinks. We need a complete overhaul of the Westminster system and practices and we need it before the second election in late 2010.

As far as party politics goes – colour me gone.

The Parliamentary pdf fearing hung parliaments, wishing to keep any one of the Big Three with a working majority.  [Courtesy IPJ]

Needless to say, I disagree that a hung parliament is a problem – it’s the portal to a new system of accountable politics.

Filed under: Politics & economics