Me

I will tell you where I am coming from so you can judge if I have spun anything on this site (unless I have spun this as well).

I would put myself as being on the left (close to Marxist but definitely democratic) when younger but slowly getting pinker as I get older. I am a lifelong Labour voter (even when I was fairly extreme left I was realistic) but am getting disenchanted with politics and politicians which worries me because I have always been a political animal. However Social Justice issues are important to me and the marginalisation of a significant proportion of the population while the majority gets more affluent particularly concerns me as does the growing influence of media led politics in which actual information becomes more and more difficult to glean.

I believe that the current first past the post constituency based Parliamentary democracy does work and has certain advantages (and obviously disadvantages) as opposed to a PR system. However I broadly support a PR system for the Lords as part of a bicameral system. I believe that in the past 20 years or so manipulation of Parliament by the government of the day (mainly by making more and more MPs part of the government or aspirants to it thereby tying them to a specific line from the top) has made considerable inroads into that democracy with the result that constituency MPs have less and less input into Parliament’s output and therefore voters feel less and less involved in Britain’s democracy. Tactical voting is potentially a way of undermining those declines and empowering voters. Finally I should say I will never vote Conservative but do have Conservative-voting friends and am considering (only considering at this stage) voting Lib Dem next time – out of pique obviously.