From all of the polls that are being published it doesn’t seem like there is going to be a clear winner this election. There are a lot of reasons for that but I think there are 2 that really matter.

The first reason is that there is no single party that has actually captured the imagination of the electorate, in terms of personality or policies. There is probably a healthy dose of cynicism for politics thrown in there too, because we are all somewhat fed up with politicians. Which to my mind is a shame but an indictment of the paucity of the current crop of politicians.

You don’t have to look very far to see clips of the top folks of any party making fools of themselves in front of journalists or each other. Social networking has made sure that each mistake is proliferated beyond traditional media, so the politicians themselves are even more bland than normal to ensure they are not posted in Facebook with their latest bloopers. This is media they cannot control with promises of influence or access with decision makers. It is interesting to think that one single person with a Facebook account can affect the perception of a politician, we are indeed more powerful that we imagine.

Secondly, and this to my mind is the most important aspect, there is actually a lot of choice at present. You may not like what some of the smaller parties stand for but they are truly representative of how people feel, in pure supply and demand terms, they wouldn’t exist unless people help these views.

Scotland and Wales have genuine representation and the Green Party are making strong headway with some decent policies and ideas. Add to that the seemingly disenfranchised voters drawn to UKIP and it makes for some serious competition for your vote along with the main parties. For the first time in a long time we have some choice.

Whether the first past the post system enables the smaller parties to capitalise on their percentage of the vote remains to be seen but this is as good as it’s been for some time.

So where will all of this choice lead? At a minimum it will lead to another form of coalition government as neither of the 2 main parties are going to win an outright majority. But it also looks like the Lib Dems won’t be able to muster the same number of seats, they really need to do a better job of showing everyone how much they held back the conservatives from their dogmatic approach to cuts. 

This is in some ways exciting as it means that we could have a wider representation for the electorate (see previous post – not all votes are equal ) the more of us that vote for our true views the more such a movement will grow and the stronger your chosen party will become over time.

Ideally there will be no firm coalition with an agenda, the best outcome is a vote by vote coalition. This means the quality of legislation will need to reflect the parties that support it. If a bill is put together badly and based on ideology rather than reason or purpose then it won’t pass unless enough parties are aligned. That means people will actually have to speak to each other as they draft their ideas to ensure inclusion.

Hang on a minute! Legislation that has consensus and dialogue?? Now wouldn’t that be amazing….it would be more than that it, would be unprecedented. In some ways I would like a Labour Party focussed on welfare & health and a Conservative party focussed on defence and the Green Party focussed on the environment. The parties are unlikely to be able to negotiate a solid coalition with such clear focus but the legislation could be worked on with the key players that have their specific specialisms.

At present the Leaders and Spokespeople of the parties are all desperately telling us that they are the only party and the vote for “the other” parties is dangerous…..blah blah blah. This is why people are disenfranchised and don’t want to vote, because such statements are not healthy or useful and they are tantamount to sabre rattling about 100 miles from the battle itself. They don’t want to have to do a deal with anyone it’s much easier if they can win it, not too complicated an idea.

This is all about power, theirs not ours, so don’t believe any of it, the more distributed the power base the safer we are, the more concentrated the worse off we are. Look at the last 2 long term Prime Ministers, Thatcher and Blair. Margaret Thatcher started the deregulation of the banking sector, changed the way we see wealth and poverty forever, and sold off council houses to generate stakeholders in her materialistic plan without building any new ones for people to live in affordably. Tony Blair, was a liar, and took the country into an illegal war with Bush (How did he ever become President – Twice!!!!!), faking documents and lying to Parliament. This is a tiny fraction of what they actually did, and they did some good stuff too, but frankly that would have happened regardless.

Power hungry people with unlimited capability to execute it, that never works out well. So having spent generations with so called “strong governments”with big majorities, which essentially was a choice to be made between the 2 main parties, we have a chance to dilute absolute power and vote for something that we actually believe. The choice is yours, whatever that means for you, exercise it wisely, but at least exercise it.