Who Not to Vote For?

To vote or not to vote? That is the question.

Choosing who to vote for has never been a problem for me. When I was a long-haired student and member of the Labour Party I duly voted Labour and continued doing so for many years, until I saw the light. That particular light was Margaret Thatcher. I started out hating her, like all idealistic lefties were supposed to do, and ended up loving her.

The change was brought about by marriage, kids and a mortgage; otherwise known as reality. I was a staff nurse in the NHS where I started in 1987 and, by 1989 with a combination of pay rises and clinical grading, my salary had doubled. Simultaneously, Maggie got inflation and interest rates under control (as well as the trade unions and the Argentinians). The point is that the benefits of having a Conservative government were tangible, and that made all the difference.

Taking my franchise seriously, I continued to make every effort to vote in local and general elections and in the referendum over membership of the EU. Mostly, I have voted Conservative but, occasionally, when more pressing issues were at stake – and bearing in mind that voting Conservative in my constituency is like trying to stop the tanks on Tiananmen Square – I have voted for other smaller parties to make sure that, at least, I exercised my right to vote.

We will soon be asked to vote in local elections and, when Rishi finally realises that the game is up, a general election. The former is a foregone conclusion here; we will get one form of infantile left-whinge-ism or another: Labour or Lib-Dem. I have voted for both and neither on several occasions. Both parties have taken up causes affecting me locally and I was especially impressed by the local Labour chap who waded in – actually waded in physically – to take videos of some of our local cultural enrichers who had decided that a nearby social centre was their preserve in which to play loud Middle Eastern music until the early hours. Where the police failed to act, he had it stopped immediately.

But, turning to the general election – the real one – things get complicated. There is not a chance that I will vote Conservative. In fact, I may never vote Conservative again given my advanced years, and the fact that turning around the woke left-wing juggernaut that now constitutes the Conservative and Unionist Party is a work of Sisyphean proportions.

But there’s more. I will never forgive the Conservative Party and all who sail in her for their craven cowardice in the face of the fake pandemic whereby they locked us down, socially distanced us, masked us up and jabbed us with an experimental gene therapy that is now wreaking havoc with people’s health across the world. That and the fact that they continue to double down on their decisions and rewarded the people who advised them to do it. No Sirree – no more Tory votes from me.

Labour will win the next election, resoundingly. It is said repeatedly that all Keir Starmer has to do is ‘not to drop the Ming vase’ and he’s in. Frankly, he could drop his pants in public and still win the election. I have toyed with the idea of voting for them just to make sure that the Conservative Party get a bloody nose and don’t return to the ballot before they have completely reformed, divested of every vestige of wokeness and developed some policies which put Britain first, reduce taxes and improve living standards for those who are willing to work. That and reducing the number of immigrants – legal and illegal – in the country. And if that involves inviting a few to return to the utopias from whence they came, so be it.

I don’t give much thought to Keir Starmer. I prefer not to. But when I look at what is on offer in my constituency, any thoughts of voting Labour dissipate. Our MP is the loathsome ‘Dame’ Diana Johnson. She is capricious, having told me to my face how much she approves of graduate nursing education (my job for the best part of 40 years), yet says exactly the opposite in Parliament, as evidenced in Hansard. But her recent push to allow women, in the process of pushing out their bambino, to change their minds and instead allow the medical staff to crush its skull, slice it into pieces and then to hoover it out and down the sluice is beyond the pale (or pail, if that’s where they put aborted foetuses). She knows where I live and what I think, and never calls when canvassing on our street.

Then we have the minority parties. I signed up to Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, but he seems to have lost interest. I am greatly impressed by David Kurten’s Heritage Party, but they will never field candidates where I live. That leaves Reform and the SDP. I would vote Reform in a heartbeat given their policies but, despite him agreeing to be interviewed by our editor-in-chief, I was unimpressed at Richard Tice’s unswerving and continued support for the Covid vaccine rollout, and his subsequent bloodlust over Reform candidates called out by that middle of the road organisation Hope not Hate.

He clearly misreads the voting public. On the one hand, nobody with an ounce of wokeness in them will ever vote Reform whatever he does. On the other hand, his genuine constituency will vote enthusiastically for anyone pilloried by Hope not Hate. What we need at this turning point in our history is bigots, if being bigoted means putting your country first.

I like William Clouston and the SDP but, since they never field candidates in my constituency, I will never have to decide whether or not to vote for them. We will have the usual array of lunatics on the ballot who don’t mind losing their deposits, and the Yorkshire Independence Party. Tempting as it may be to declare UDI in Yorkshire, I cannot see that working.

I have never spoiled my ballot paper before. But since we don’t have the provision for ‘write in’ candidates like they do in the USA or the provision to vote for ‘None of the above’, I fear I may be heading for my first spoiled ballot paper. Unless anyone has any better ideas, those are my opinions. Unlike Groucho Marx, I don’t have any others.

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

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