I have a vote in the recently announced UK General Election.
My priorities:
- take decisive action to address the climate crisis;
- abort the idiot nationalist rampage of destruction that is brexit.
This is my impression of the parties, in terms of brexit:
- UKIP: a nationalist party taken over by a bunch of anti–islamic racists;
- Brexit Party: a nationalist party supported by American white supremacists;
- Conservative Party: a party that has drifted towards nationalism and extremism that has recently thrown out its sensible wing, that strongly supports brexit;
- Labour Party: a left wing party that has drifted towards nationalism, extremism and antisemitism, but which is redeemable, that supports brexit (their current policy is to renegotiate brexit, not drop it);
- Lib Dems: a strongly internationalist party that opposes nationalism and brexit;
- Greens: an internationalist party that opposes brexit.
Ditto, in terms of the climate crisis:
- UKIP: identical to the Brexit Party;
- Brexit Party: openly deny the established science, as such are fantasists;
- Conservatives: not so bad at all; could have been a lot worse in government; if I were voting in Michael Gove’s constituency, I’d consider giving him a personal vote were it not for his opinions on Brexit;
- Labour: en route;
- Lib Dems: have some very good people with some good policies, but suffer the same problem as the greens;
- Greens: the big banner obvious glaring party to support to express concern about the climate crisis, with the problem that a number of their policies would make it worse (e.g. supporting organic farming, opposing nuclear energy, etc.).
I’ll be voting in England, so haven’t watched carefully enough the SNP, Plaid Cymru, or any of the Northern Ireland parties. If I did, I’d have to give a far more nuanced analysis of nationalism, though would still oppose it.
My vote is in a seat that where one brexit party is challenging another — it’s Conservative held, and near the bottom of the Labour Party list of target seats. Given I will never vote for a brexit party, I can vote for neither. Thus I can contribute nothing to balance of seats in this general election; all I can do is give +1 to the national vote of a remain party. However, I can, and will, make donations to local parties elsewhere in the UK, which might help the remain fight in this divisive election.
The last time round, both the Lib Dems and the Greens stood in my seat. Presuming they both do now, one of them will get my vote.
Obviously, these are my early opinions. There’s a lot that can happen in the campaign, a lot of thing that can change my opinion.