A lot of people think and vote tribally like that, which I totally understand

It's kind of engrained into us: define yourself as X, anything that is not-X is venal and nasty and must be fought at all costs.

In past lives I spent about 15 years working in and around Whitehall/Westminster/equivalents in other countries.

Something I learned very fast is that:

- there are incredibly competent, likeable and moral people in all parties
- there are incredibly useless, hateful and opportunistic people in all parties, and sadly these are the large majority
- any party is a coalition between differing philosophical starting points and/or power bases. The infighting between different groups in the same party is appallingly vicious and far, far worse than what any party inflicts on the other parties
- genuine friendships between senior people in the same party is quite rare. Far more usual is for people to get close to people from other parties who are like themselves but unencumbered by having to fight tooth and nail for the same opportunities/jobs

So I've become quite unable to see things in the tribal terms I once did. There are Tories, Liberals and Labourites that I would vote for in a heartbeat given the opportunity because they are good, competent, deeply moral people who genuinely have the needs of the rest of us at heart.

Sadly most people in most parties are not like this and at this election I will be faced with a choice of two who are Definitely Not Like This, a no-hoper who'll be some Essex Boy shipped in to get the check-mark on his CV (no, I'm not being sexist, it'll be a Boy, it always is) and the usual calvacade of racists, nutters and no-hopers.

I'm very tempted to blank-vote but in fact I will vote for someone who has the best chance of beating someone I really don't want to be my MP, even though the person I'm voting for would not do a great job of it themselves.

So it goes.

Grubby business, politics. As someone once said, democracy is the worst possible way to run a country, apart from all the other ways.

Posted By: Old Man, Apr 24, 18:55:05