So yes, I’ve finally voted in this year’s general election, choosing the Liberal Democrats. It was probably pretty evident from my posts over the last month or so that I was leaning in that direction, but I tried to refrain from being too party-political or biased. Hopefully that came across.
I’d like to explain the reasoning behind my choice, in what will probably be a long post. For edited highlights, try reading the Guardian and Observer’s endorsements of the Lib Dems. They sum up most of the points I’ll be making below, with a few discrepancies here and there.
When I’ve thought about it over the last week or so, there are three main policy areas in which I find myself agreeing with the Lib Dems more than the other two parties, and which for me are vitally important.
Firstly, Europe. I’m one of the most pro-EU people I know, and the Lib Dems are the most similarly aligned of the three largest parties. In fact, only the Greens come anywhere close in being as continental in outlook, with Labour resolutely undecided about Europe, and the Tories too nailed to a eurosceptic point of view.
Maybe it’s because I have first-hand experience and knowledge of how the EU has improved and benefited our country that I am such a big fan. I spent a year living in Germany as part of my degree, and I also studied EU law too. This combination has given me a massive insight into just how much we need and should want the EU in our lives.
I appreciate that it has a bit of democratic deficit, but if more people paid attention to what it actually does, rather than believing the crap they read in their newspapers, they’d engage with it more. The EU is vitally important, but we Brits seem to want to keep it at arms length.
The Lib Dems embrace Europe (it helps that their leader, Nick Clegg, was an MEP, but that’s not always a good thing, since the leaders of both the BNP and UKIP are also MEPs nowadays…), and for that I support them. I’m not certain as to whether we should be joining the Euro just yet, but in the long term I think it would also be to our benefit.
The second major factor for me is electoral reform. Again, I consider my experiences influenced by Germany, which to my mind has a better electoral system than us. They use proportional representation (PR) with a link to local constituencies, and it seems so much fairer than our elections.
For too long our elections have favoured the big two parties at the expense of all others, and this is systemically unfair. The Tories and Labour want to maintain this system, because they are the biggest winners. The Lib Dems have campaigned for many years to change it, especially in the light of a changing Britain which is more pluralistic in its views.
And, as the two old parties have moved towards the centre ground, becoming so alike that our politics is one of managerialism rather than ideologies nowadays, there is room for different views, and for different voices to be heard.
Maintaining the status quo that first-past-the-post gives us is simply not enough. Change is absolutely necessary on this, and only the Lib Dems are calling for it.
The third major point for me is immigration. I’m not one of these people that believes immigration is inherently a bad thing, nor that our Englishness is something necessarily worth protecting at all costs. I definitely don’t believe the thinly-veiled racism that passes for media coverage of the topic, and I don’t think we need to be hardline on it.
People come to this country because our standard of living is so high. Even doing menial jobs here is a thousand times better than many of the homelands of our immigrants. And those jobs are available because the British public seems to view them as below their status in life, for want of a better way of putting it.
“We’re supposed to be a relatively rich, advanced society, so why does someone need to flip burgers at McDonalds, or clean floors?”, so the line of thinking goes. And yet these people complain when someone comes to the country, willing to do those crappy jobs and theoretically freeing up a Brit to do a better-paid job in a more fulfilling role.
It’s not that all immigrants come to do those kind of jobs, of course. Doctors, nurses, and so on: many of them come from abroad to fill a gap where our education system is lacking. Yes, it’d be great to fill all those posts domestically, but in some respects it’s just not possible right now. With more money pumped into training and education, it will be, but those jobs need to be filled now.
The Lib Dems’ policy of an amnesty of sorts for those long-term residents here who were born abroad, but contribute massively to our society is a welcome position, and in stark contrast to fear-mongering elsewhere. I could point to plenty of studies which show that immigrants in fact contribute much more to our tax system than they get out of it, but those aren’t really ever frontpage news…
Those are my three main reasons for choosing the Lib Dems this year, but there are others:
I support their opposition to renewing the Trident nuclear programme, which is a £100 billion relic of yesteryear. We don’t need nukes, and to be honest I think Britain is trying to maintain the glory days of punching above its weight in world politics. We should embrace the new world order, and take our relevant position at the table. A pointless nuclear show of force won’t help that.
Scrapping ID cards is both a cost-saver and a step in the right direction in terms of restoring civil liberties which were taken away under the post-9/11 regime. Likewise the plans to do away with police DNA storage from innocent citizens, and attempts to regulate CCTV better. We’ve sleepwalked into a time when the state has far too much power in this realm, and this needs to be stopped.
The proposal to scrap tuition fees will probably never see the light of day, but it’s a good one. There must be room in the budget to subsidise further each university student to the tune of £3,000 per year, surely?! Even with tuition fees in place, the government pays the lion’s share of the cost of educating that student at university. Ending tuition fees would ensure students graduate debt-free, and enable more poorer students to attend university.
Raising the minimum threshold of income tax to £10,000 is another good move to help the poorest people in society. If this has to be paid for by increasing taxes at the top end, so be it. I probably fall into the top tax bracket, but I’ll pay more tax if it means those at the bottom of the income scale fare better. It’s all relative anyway: an extra £700 a year to someone earning £10,000 means so much more than say £2,000 missing from my pocket.
I’m pretty left on the issue of taxation, and I’m a fan of the state in certain areas, like health and education. The state should be the one providing everyone with a minimum standard of health and education. Those standards should be high, obviously, but the market is there to create even higher standards, and charge for them too, should people want them.
The Lib Dems are pretty green too, although I don’t agree with them on their firm opposition to nuclear power. Although I’d love to see much more renewable energy used (wind farms all round our coastline? Yes please!), nuclear power is cleaner than other fossil fuels, and safe nowadays. We shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.
Whilst the other parties also had policies that I liked, I feel that the Lib Dems have come the closest to being the complete package for me. Yes, I’ve probably missed out a few areas here and there, but these are the things that I deem important, and on which I’m basing my vote.
I’ve voted Liberal Democrat this year, and I hope the above explains why.
