Tag: None of the Above

Still not voting…

GE2019

At the beginning of the Month, I wrote ‘No, I will not vote in an Election where there isn’t an option for change. Why would I?‘

With three weeks gone and two more to go until the Election on Thursday 12th December, I have to say that I feel very much the same.

It’s not that there hasn’t been any change. There has.

But the change that has happened has been peripheral or aesthetic at best.

The good that might come from the adjustments within the political landscape that have taken place within this Campaign will not have come about not by design or intention, but rather by default.

With 15 days to go, the biggest issue on everyone’s mind today, is the Interview that Jeremy Corbyn gave to Andrew Neil last night. It followed a day where Labour’s choreographed plan for a day focused on their ‘ambitious Race and Faith Manifesto’ was utterly destroyed by the article written by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and published in yesterday’s Times, explaining exactly why people should redirect their vote.

The Interview itself simply evolved a terrible day into a complete nightmare for the Labour Leader as he effectively refused to apologise for the anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and what the Party has done in response.

The Tories are riding high. And with the latest polls now suggesting that the gap between the Conservatives and Labour is closing, the fall out from this debacle is almost certain to ensure that the polling will quickly start to go the other way.

Or at least that is until Boris sits in front of AF Neil himself whenever that might be agreed and then be.

The big problem is that the Conservatives are riding a wave that doesn’t have defining Public Policy as its root cause.

Labour’s downward trajectory and overkill with its great electoral giveaway of 2019 aside, the biggest boon to Boris Johnson’s position has been the decision from Nigel Farage to remove so many of the Brexit Party’s Candidates from competing against Tory Candidates in Seats where the Conservatives won in the 2017 Campaign.

On the face of it, Farage did this to avoid the risk of Jeremy Corbyn walking into No10.

Yet his hybrid approach of standing Brexit Party Candidates pretty much everywhere else does have the distinctive whiff of the whole effort the Brexit Party is making being not about Brexit itself, but about gaining at least a foothold of control.

The lie itself is given by Farage’s suggestion during the Press Conference at the time that Boris had done enough with the pledges he had made about Brexit in the video that had been released the day before.

To some, it will come as little surprise that recent days have brought stories to the fore, that Farage has no plans to go anywhere. That his next mission will be to rebrand the Brexit Party and transform it into a political vehicle that will drive political reform.

The problem for Farage with this is that apart from the reality he has to now face that as a figurehead and leader he is no longer likely to be trusted, any Party that can be identified as being about nothing else other than Leaving the EU itself is likely to be as divisive as Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats have been by rejecting the need to find a pathway that will bring all sides together and committing themselves to cancel Brexit and promise that under their influence the UK will categorically Remain.

To its credit, the Brexit Party has demonstrated that it is possible to bring people, politicians and pubic figures from all political backgrounds together to work as one.

But the ‘Contract’ that they have published instead of a manifesto for this General Election tells us that the leadership of the Party is still thinking about politics in exactly the same way as the leadership of all of the other Political Parties who have contributed to the political crisis that we are experiencing and not least of all the Brexit Divide.

We now look two weeks ahead to an Election Result where Boris is still likely one-way-or-another to be our PM.

But being PM with a majority that is likely to lead to a clean, no deal Brexit by default within 12 months is a lot different to the situation that Boris will face if he is returned as Prime Minister with similar numbers of MPs in Parliament to what we have experienced since 2017 – where the majority present is most likely to still be pushing for further delays, obfuscation and what they will only accept as being a very open form of Remain.

The chaos that follows any of the scenarios that appear to be likely and unfolding from this vantage point in time will not improve things. It is likely to only make things a whole lot worse.

Whilst I and many others would like to see reason for hope that any of the Political Parties we have today and running in this Election could become the catalyst for wide-ranging change, once we have brought everyone back together again by really getting Brexit done, I’m afraid that paying lip service to the change that the UK desperately now needs simply isn’t enough for me to vote for any Candidate or Political Party that is involved.

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No, I will not vote in an Election where there isn’t an option for change. Why would I?

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Whilst our crooked politicians fall over themselves working how to con enough people into wasting yet another vote, they are missing the undercurrent which is building amongst Members of the Public who whether Left, Right, Centre, Leave or Remain now realise that the system is not working for them and there must be another way and that means a different choice

How are you going to vote in the General Election on Thursday 12th December 2019?

That – or a form of it – is a question that will pass across many lips in the next 37 days as we approach the Winter Poll, if it hasn’t done so already.

For me, there isn’t actually a choice. I will not be voting in 5 weeks time for any Candidate, nor any of the Political Parties that are involved.

Coming from the experience of having been a Member of three different Local Authorities and a Licensing Chair too, I have written extensively about the problems with our political system and why we are getting the politicians and the groups, Councils and Governments that we do.

In early 2018 I created the Website How to Get Elected and the E-Book that followed it as a guide for anyone who wanted to run in a Local Election as an independent and become a good Councillor too. I didn’t write about running in an Election to become a Member of Parliament at any great length, simply because the whole thing is a closed shop.

Right now, we are witnessing yet another great giveaway where our own money is being thrown at us just so that we will be conned into keeping the wrong people in power.

Yes, some of the faces will be different when Parliament is recalled the Monday after the Election. What they do, how they approach it and how they are motivated might appear a little different. But the results for all of us and the experience that we continue to have of the impact of Government will remain pretty much just as they already are.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The three main parties –  or what I’ll call a triumvirate – basically have a monopoly on this Parliament. Those Parties now exist only to extend and propagate their own existence. They do this by selecting candidates in their own image and quickly exclude anyone from running for seats they see as simply being theirs with no hint of real or genuine democracy being involved.

So whilst we have all of the Party Leaders and their Party machines throwing all sorts of different policies and approaches at us as part of their respective Campaigns, the reality underpinning all of it is that we are going to have the same people in power – one way or another. None of them are about change.

Yes, arguments are being made that if we don’t vote for Boris, we will let a marxist government in.

But these are the kinds of arguments deliberately created to frighten us and keep us in line with what the Establishment wants, each time there is any threat of Government walking in that will do things differently.

The problem is many of us fall for it, especially as there doesn’t appear to be any alternative option to the choices we have. The whole thing is a vicious circle that ends up in the same old place with the very same choices all over again.

Yet this General Election isn’t just about Brexit. But it should be about the opportunities that exist to put right all the wrongs that this Country and the People within it are facing. Issues that can only be addressed once we are successfully beyond.

We need MPs who have the understanding and the wherewithal to do all that is necessary, with the drive and motivation to serve all of us and do everything that is necessary not only to deliver Brexit, but to get everything else done too.

I cannot and will not vote for any candidate who doesn’t know exactly what they are getting themselves into by standing AND is then still prepared to put their career, reputation and future on the line to do what is right for all the People they were elected to represent as a matter of deliberate and fully informed choice.

Being a Member of Parliament is not an individuals job or the same thing as employment. It is a responsibility to us all.

I cannot consciously nor voluntarily support any candidate or any Party who continues to approach the Representation of the People as being just a route or even a plaything that will take them to wherever they want to be or to do whatever it is that they themselves and only themselves want to do.

Politicians should be aware that I am not alone.

In a conversation I have already had this morning, I have heard of people who have been paid up Members of those three ‘main’ Political Parties looking at the mess that our self-serving Politicians have created and are placing a very big question mark over the prospect of voting in this General Election and what they will do.

People are tired of everything that Politicians have been doing. The way they behave. The way they contemptuously take our votes for granted. The way they clearly believe that once they have drawn a line under Brexit, for them things will just go back to being as they always were. That for them, the Westminster gravy train will always turn out the same.

My choice will simply not be to vote on 12th December if the approach and attitude of ALL the Political Parties remain as they are today.

It will be the same for others too.

Some will spoil their ballot papers. Some will write ‘None of the Above’.

But for all of us who decide to boycott this Election, the People and the Political Parties running in it, the Politicians who still represent this dreadful era and its terrible lies should not see anyones choice to be silent this December as an endorsement of anything that any of them are still choosing to do.

It is a clear statement that we have had enough and that we now want change.

That we now understand the rules of the crooked game that they play which keeps them in control whilst excluding all opportunity for us and for politicians with an alternative approach to do anything too.

We the People who see them for what they are, are growing in number.

Our choice is to no longer play along.

image thanks to unknown