Thursday, May 05, 2005

vote swapping

My local MP, Des Turner, voted against Blair's government on the following issues:

- Prevention of Terrorism Bill
- Tuition Fees
- Foundation Hospitals
- Iraq
- new UN resolution
- Emergency Iraq debate
- Incapacity benefits means testing

as well as voting for the abolition of fox hunting. He currently has a majority of 4,922 votes - surely enough to defeat the Conservative in second place. All the same, I can readily imagine 5,000 labour voters in Kemptown voting Lib Dem. I don't want a tory MP.

And I like Des Turner.

But I don't want to endorse Labour.

Anyone live somewhere where Labour have a strong majority, who was going to vote with our lovely party of government? If so, fancy swapping your Labour vote for my Lib Dem / Green one? You can register my dissatisfaction in your constituency and I'll try to hang on to Des in Brighton?

Otherwise, I'll just sit here for the next eight hours trying to work out what to do.

UPDATE: more on Kemptown and Des Turner over at Clagnut, btw.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

don't vote labour - you're insane if you do.

Jonathan said...

yeah, I know, I'm insane to be even thinking about it.

I'm really sorely tempted just to not fucking vote in the first place, frankly.

Anonymous said...

what happened to your Green vote!???

Jonathan said...

or you could argue it's tactical voting that brought down labour's majority so effectively! no-one wanted hove to go tory, that wasn't what tactical voting was about.

glad celia won - we kept des too, which is really good news.

Anonymous said...

presumably a tactical vote to keep out a tory is alright though, hove labour? what would you have done if hove had been liberal democrat vs. tory?

Jonathan said...

I think the problem is that a lot of people, maybe for the first time, really strongly feel that they don't have a party of their own anymore. Reading manifestos of the major parties, I really fundamentally disagree with about an equivalent amount of what Labour, the Libs, the Greens and even Respect have to say. There is no one party which feels like a natural ally. I really did make my decision in the voting booth; I was in there for about five minutes!