I’ve long had a rather furtive desire to vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Probably a frivolous idea and a wasted vote, but there you are. As they only seemed to stand in by elections, and there was never one where I lived, I never got the chance.
Until now. My MP, Tristram Hunt, having been re-elected in 2015, recently fucked off to a new job at the V&A. At last, here was my chance… but no. Stoke-on-Trent has the dubious name as the capital of Brexit, with the strongest leave vote in the country. It’s not the first time Stoke has had dubious political distinction: a few years ago, the city elected 9 BNP councillors. In the 2015 election, UKIP came second to Labour, and they clearly fancied their chances in the by election.
I loathe UKIP. For all their pose as the new party of the working class, they’re made up of, in former PM Cameron’s words, fruitcakes and loonies. They’re more right wing than the Tories. I’ve never understood working people who vote Conservative, and working people voting for UKIP are turkeys voting for Christmas. And their candidate in Stoke Central, the new leader Paul Nuttall, was especially contemptible.
First, there were allegations that the address he gave on his nomination was false: it was an allegedly empty property in Stoke (https://www.channel4.com/news/did-ukip-leader-paul-nuttall-break-election-law) ; then there was his claim that he lost friends in the Hillsborough disaster, later revealed to be untrue; he couldn’t name a single one of the six towns when asked; and his election slogan to be defending the NHS was undermined by earlier statements that he thought the NHS unfit for purpose and that should be privatised (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paul-nuttall-want-privatise-nhs-9676639). All in all, a wholly unsuitable prospective MP.
The pundits were predicting a close contest in Stoke. I certainly didn’t want a UKIP MP, especially someone like Nuttall, so I could not in all conscience vote for the Monsters. The most likely to defeat UKIP was Labour, and this time at least, in contrast to Hunt, their man was local. So he got my vote. Not out of any conviction, it was purely tactical. If the polls had suggested an easy Labour hold, my vote would have gone elsewhere.
As someone who identifies as left-wing, and who is, according to the Political Compass Test, a left libertarian, Labour should probably be my natural choice. My problem is with their leader, Jeremy Corbyn. When he first stood for the leadership, I paid my three quid and voted for him. He seemed to be something hopeful, something different and left wing, a break from the near Toryism of the Blair years.
By the time of the second leadership election, my enthusiasm had markedly cooled. Partly his poor performance and incompetence, but I was alarmed when I came across footage of him describing his “friends in Hamas and Hezbollah”. Friends in terrorist organisations? Really? However much he might sympathise with the plight of the Palestinians, the founding charter of Hamas calls for the obliteration of Israel, and is virulently anti-Semitic. (more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant). Some of the stuff Hamas et al come out with could have been written by Hitler. And Corbyn calls himself an anti-fascist. Admittedly, he has since expressed some regret at this, but it strikes me as half-hearted (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/04/jeremy-corbyn-grilled-by-mps-on-labours-anti-semitism-problem/)
Even though Labour lost the other by election in Copeland, I’m sure Comrade Corbyn will stay as leader. As long as this incompetent fool remains, I won’t vote for Labour. I did so this time tactically to keep UKIP out.
Rants and Gallivants 