I’ve left this rather late to write, so I’m going to have to self-plagiarise from previous blogs and Facebook posts because although there is much lying in politics there are some things which are true and can be re-used: vote your values definitely being one of them.
Is this the most important UK general election ever? Er, well, yes: at least since the last one. And maybe the next one. Really, every election is only ever as important as the effects it will have on you and the people and things that you value.
Could it really be that simple? Well, if you already know what’s important to you, are willing to spend some time prioritising those things and then match them to party manifesto policies then yes, it is that easy.
And here are some policy trackers to make it even easier (use the 2nd if you want to be able to do so without bias)
If after having spent the time sorting through policies that reflect your values, you believe the current government are doing the best job and no other parties offer anything better then stick with the incumbent.
However, have you taken into account how many years the current government has been in power for? A government that has been in power for 10 years really ought to be running on some record of successes: it says much about their failures if they cannot.
Oh, and though I accept that not voting is an option, really that’s like voting for nothing rather than something. Why would you give up the only political power you have that is equal to everyone-else’s, no matter how many more times richer and powerful they are than you? Vote for something, even if it’s not how you normally would.
Voting for party leaders
Don’t! Realistically only 1 of 2 of the party leaders can become Prime Minister. Sadly both of them have failed us in too many ways to list. In this time of a nation-dividing crisis we deserved so much better than what we got.
I’m confident that Jeremy Corbyn is not an Anti-Semite or for Anti-Semitism of any kind. Why am I sure? Because he has been a vocal opponent of racism of any kind for seemingly all his political life and if there were any evidence that he was an Anti-Semite, the UK press would’ve been all over it ages ago and it would have been broadcasted and written about daily.
However, Corbyn has had over 3 years in which to sort out Antisemitism within Labour. I’m a life-long Labour supporter – never voted for any other party – but because of the cack-handed, appalling way in which he has failed to address it, I would rather he was returned to the backbenches and more capable leadership put in place. Actually, that and for being unable to score the easiest of daily open goals delivered up by the worst Tory governments ever. Even Michael Foot would’ve torn this lot to pieces.
As for Boris Johnson – I don’t believe he’s a racist – I just think that he has the casual confidence of a public schoolboy educated beyond caring and one who has rarely suffered consequences. Most of those educated at public schools are not like this – I spent a year and a half at a very posh school where I was taught how to teach myself: it was a foundational part of my schooling.
Boris Johnson is a moral void with zero empathy unable to take responsibility for anything.
Imagine if Jeremy Corbyn was as careless with his words as Boris Johnson? The broadcast media & press would have eviscerated him.
How can we elect a Prime Minister who can’t even admit to how many children he has fathered?
Boris Johnson refuses to answer. He is unable to give a number.
Nothing-else asked for; just a number. How many kids do you have?
How little does Boris Johnson care? Well, whilst his estranged wife Marina Wheeler, mother of most of his children that we know of, was diagnosed with cervical cancer, he was allegedly cavorting with Carrie Symonds.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9699790/boris-ex-wife-cancer/
Boris Johnson is a coward & a charlatan. He lies as easily as he breathes.
How can we elect someone to be Prime Minister of the UK if he is scared of an interview?
This is not a Presidential election, so you shouldn’t be voting for either leader. Many of you will not pay this the slightest damn attention but, at least, I tried.
Vote for policies instead of leaders and you will feel less sullied if / when they let you down.
Oh, but Brexit?
In any normal general election, we would only need to concern ourselves with policies on the usual things that occupy our government:
- Crime
- Economy
- Education
- Environment
- Equalities & Rights
- Foreign Policy / Defence
- Health / NHS
- Housing
- Immigration
- Jobs / Work
- Tax
- Transport
- Welfare & Pensions
That’s enough for any government to be trying to get on with but now there is also Brexit because David Cameron decided that he was going to involve the entire UK in the Tory party’s endless European Union psychodrama with an EU referendum.
Whether you voted Leave or Remain or didn’t vote at all, I think we can all agree that Brexit has divided us like no other issue and has been a three and a half year sh*tshow we could have all done without.
Actually, it’s not fair of me to lay Brexit at Cameron’s door. He had the good sense to run away rather than try to besmirch his legacy further with trying to implement an impossible task.
What’s that? You don’t think implementing Brexit is an impossible task? OK, tell me this: what is Brexit? And no, you can’t use Theresa May’s oh so stupid phrase: “Brexit means Brexit”.
She could’ve delivered some kind of Brexit with cross-party involvement. Instead, Theresa May stuck to her red lines, i.e. her deal or No Deal (never a good idea to hold you own nation hostage). Chewed up by the Tory party she had dedicated her life to – she ended up on the sidelines as Boris Johnson handed the Tory party to the ERG and kicked out One Nation Tory MPs like Ken Clarke & David Gauke.
Her cards were bad and she played her hand poorly. Yes, she was forced into failure by the rabid right of her party, but that too had been a series of choices. She could have told them no multiple times but she didn’t. She put herself and the Tory party before country, and that is unforgivable.
You might plump for Brexit means leaving the EU, but then you’d have to explain how? What does the UK look like after we’ve done that? How will we have changed? And is this something that all 17.4 million people who voted Leave are agreed on?
I bear no ill-feelings towards anyone who voted to Leave. They voted to be heard; to shake things up. They voted Leave because they’d spent decades not being listened to and being fed false information on the EU. They voted for change because the lives they were living were not the ones they wanted. If you’d been living a life like that and there was someone you trusted telling you there was a better tomorrow if you voted to Leave, then you’d be an idiot not to.
I should declare an interest: I voted Remain. This does not make me a Remainer or a Remoaner (we ought to be able to conduct robust but civilised debates without resorting to name-calling and other shameful behaviours).
Being a Remain voter does not make me less patriotic than anyone who voted Leave. If anything because I love my country, I felt that I ought to properly educate myself before the EU referendum vote, so I could make the best decision for myself and our great nation. I did this because although feelings matter and I have just as many as people who voted Leave; it’s always good to have facts and evidence so we can make good decisions.
Also, I was half-aware that Tory and Labour governments had both been guilty of allowing negative EU propaganda to be spread without answer – it’s useful for all national governments to have a bogeyman on which things can be blamed. I spent a lot of my spare time doing that, because it was important: EU Referendum, and even then I missed the importance of keeping Ireland border-free.
I have many friends and family who voted Remain and less who voted Leave. The people who voted Remain were not more intelligent than those who voted Leave. If they had been cleverer then they would have long ago recognised the pain & suffering many were feeling in the country from the effects of globalisation and sought to do something about it. Unfortunately, they didn’t do anything: not because they didn’t care but because most were not affected by the same issues or by the same amount as most of those who voted Leave. Turns out it’s easier than you might imagine to be blind to something you don’t feel.
I’m not going to tell you that you were wrong for voting how you did, however you did.
I just want you to be really clear why you did and after everything is done you hold the right people to account.
Those of us who voted Remain did so for 1 thing: to stay; to keep the 4 freedoms; to keep our place in Europe, to keep our place at the head table as one of the most influential rule-making members and not be relegated to a rule-taker with no voting rights or veto powers.
Those of you who voted to Leave voted for different things: to get back sovereignty (we didn’t need to get it back, we always had it), to take control (of some stuff – can you name that stuff?), to cut immigration, etc. Maybe some of you voted for some of those or for other things, but there was never an agreed way to Leave and so here we are 3.5 years later still arguing.
Regardless why you voted to Leave and whether you meant to or not there is one thing that all those who voted Leave did and that was to take away from all of us the rights and freedoms to work, live and love wherever and whomever we wanted to within the EU. You took it from yourselves and you took it from everyone-else, including your loved ones and those not yet born. At least that’s what the Tory party seems to have decided you did.
Regardless, as I said earlier, I have no ill-will towards anyone who voted to Leave. My righteous anger is entirely reserved for the leaders of Leave who promised all manner of things that were not true. Remember when they told us Brexit would be easy? How is Brexit going to be good for our nation? How is Brexit going to make us better?
But Boris Johnson will Get Brexit Done – No, he won’t. That’s just another damn lie.
Anyone who tells you that any Brexit deal or leaving on a No Deal (otherwise known as WTO or Clean) Brexit will get Brexit done is lying to you. Doing either does not end Brexit. It does not let us move onto more important things like the NHS, schools, climate change, etc.
No, it just ends stage 1 of Brexit: agreeing UK exit and departure terms, i.e. the money owed.
What is No Deal or a WTO terms or a managed Brexit? All these things mean the same thing: jump off the cliff.
How bad could that be? 10 years of austerity will have been a stroll through the park. Think Winter of Discontent: manufacturing and farming will be decimated and as for our much-vaunted financial services sector just watch capital take flight.
Stage 2 of Brexit is agreeing our terms of trade with the EU, which will take another 5-10 years. What you thought we would be trading on the same terms with the EU. Sorry, that was another lie.
Do we have to trade with the EU? Well, no but they are the largest trading bloc in the world and most of our trade is with them and they’re our closest neighbours. If you don’t think distance matters, then perhaps you ought to consider why shipping costs increase with distance and why it costs more to fly to the US or Australia than it does to Lanzarote or Malaga.
But we can get a good deal with the US. Wake-up! With Trump as President there is no special US relationship – just whatever sops he deigns to give us. We can’t even get legal prosecution of Anne Sacoolas for the death of Harry Dunn.
But Boris Johnson says it will be done. We can trust him; after all he got a new deal when everybody said he couldn’t. Yes, he did so by agreeing on a border in the Irish sea, something that no UK Prime Minister could ever accept.
Boris Johnson lies: he lies all the time. He lies as easily as he breathes. Lied to the Queen, lied to the People and lied to Parliament.
At some point, we are going to have to figure out how to make politicians accountable for things that they say, do and claim. At the moment, there are too few consequences for lies that are being told and causing serious harm to our nation.
Voting for or against Brexit
A general election is about many things and now this one is also about Brexit: the single most divisive thing to have happened to our nation since World War II.
If you believe Brexit is going to be good for you and the people that you care for and / or love then you should vote for the Tory party or Brexit Party or Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) depending on where you live.
If you think:
- Brexit is bad, or
- Brexit deserves to be decided on its own via a binding referendum with facts & evidence and not feelings & fantasies, or
- Brexit is lower in your priorities, or
- Maintaining the Union is important
then you need to vote tactically to prevent a majority Tory government.
- http://remainunited.org (Gina Miller)
- http://tactical-vote.uk (People’s Vote – as from the Wayback Machine)
- http://GetVoting.org (Best for Britain)
I didn’t want a 2nd referendum, I wanted the result of the last one to be discussed in Parliament. I wanted the VoteLeave leaders to have to say on the record why they lied and to tell the truth about the likely impact if they tried to deliver on those lies and whether or not they still wanted to do so.
Given there never was a clear Brexit post-EURef plan, Parliament should give the country a choice on keeping our current EU deal in place or taking a new one as proposed by VoteLeave with a clear explanation on what that means for Single Mkt access, Immigration & Sovereignty (Workers’ & Human Rights).
If you are a traditional and / or long-term Tory / Conservative supporter then this will be difficult for you to do. Think on this: is it party before country or country before party?
If that’s not enough, then do you really want to continue to support a party that voted for savage disability benefits cuts? How was voting to impoverish the Disabled compassionate? Which ESA or PIP cuts had to be made?
Austerity was Tory party policy. It was a choice they made: for what? So that the Top 1% can own 21% of total UK wealth or so the Top 10% can own 53% of total UK wealth. Austerity was a Tory party policy that just delivered greater wealth inequality.
Want to know the values of any particular MP then check their voting record & their register of interests remember they work for you.
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Created: 11th December 2019, Published: 11th December 2019.
Updated: 12th December 2019 – added Andrew Neil interview challenge to Boris Johnson and other minor edits.
Updated: 20th March 2020 – added link to blog: Coronavirus – Where we’re at.
© JAK 2019
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