An insidious disease

The Lib Dems seem to have put out what I think is their 6th leaflet in the ward (apologies if I have lost count...). Yet again the headline is focussed on not letting the Tories win, stating that anyone not voting Lib Dem is voting Tory by default, etc. - you know the script! Fortunately fewer and fewer people are believing that in this election as the Greens are very much in the running and have a good chance of winning. Of course they are also doing themselves no favours by putting out the mountain of paper - people are complaining!

The arguement that people should not vote for the party that represents their views is a dreadful function of our un-democratic electoral system, but the argument is worse than that. It is insidious disease in modern elections that enforces the appalling first past the post system, disillusions millions into voting for parties they don't support and that takes the policy debate out of politics.

Ian Dunt puts it well in his commentary on Caroline Lucas speaking at the Labour conference after a labour councillor launched an attack on her:

"At the end, he told her that by running she would merely allow the Tories in. Barring the practical realities of that argument, it is a pernicious and nasty piece of reasoning. It is the intellectual equivalent of threatening your wife with divorce every time you have an argument. If someone believes in something, they should vote for it, not have the eventuality of a Tory government waved in their face for daring to consider their options. Labour's been using this argument for about a decade now and to say it's grating is an understatement. It's logical conclusion leads us to a one party state – an eventuality entirely compatible with the police state the party has tried to create n modern Britain"