The idoiocy of British politics.....

In Britain we have a predominantly three party political system with a few fringe parties beyond that. The main parties are Conservative, towards the centre-right of the political spectrum with an emphasis on devolved power to regional centres, a minimisation of government spending and intervention and a liberalisation of the economics of capitalism to drive the economy forward. We then have the Labour party, centre-left in position leaning towards centralisation and government control, guided by quasi-socialist principles of a fair society through political intervention. Between the two major players we find the Liberal Democrats who tend to be rather more left-centric than was the case in the past, being focused on creating a better and more equitable education and health system by reducing government spending on what they consider to be non-essential areas such as defense. This is of course a drastic overslimplification, but such is the nature of blogging.

Currently we are operating under a coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, with the Conservatives being the dominant party in the coalition. We are also in a particularly delicate and fragile economic position as we slow start to emerge from a severe economic downturn. We are in an interesting position as a consequence of our economic situation that whichever party had been successful at the last election would have been faced with the need to make drastic cuts in public spending in order to reduce the deficit caused by bailing out our banking sector to the tune of almost a trillion pounds. It seems to have escaped everyones notice that we bailed out thebanks in the form of purchasing shares and that at some point the government will be in a position to sell those shares, and with a following wind they may even turn a profit on them for taxpayers - although given our history particularly with our sales of our gold reserves in the 1970's we do have a habit of missing the curve in terms of selling our national assets.

The idiocy mentioned in the title is that it appears, as a voter it makes little if any difference which of these apparently varied parties I choose, or indeed if I choose non of them. I am left in the same position of limited government action, limited accountability, limited responsibility. I want, crave and need a party that will engage with the British public at a far more fundamental level. That will understand at a core level the hopes dreams and aspirations we the citizens have for our great and beautiful nation. That will want to work hand in hand with, rather than against those of us who are committed to making our country better. But what do we get? Politicians who seem incapable of reaching a position of power without engaging in corruption, without being in the pocket of one corporation or another, without having an eye on the revolving door exit strategy that seems endemic in Westminster. I believe that enough is far too much, and that the time is ripe for root and branch change in our political system. We need to stand up and be counted as with one voice at the next opportunity we state quite clearly that given the available choices on the ballot paper we would far rather write in re-open nominations......