Hannah Swithinbank

So, until recently I was registered to vote in North East Fife, where Sir Menzies Campbell is happily ensconced as LibDem MP.  I like Sir Ming generally, and the LibDems generally, and if I’d stayed registered up there I would have merrily mailed in my vote for him, and it wouldn’t have made any difference in the world if I hadn’t because a blind monkey could see how safely seated he is in that part of the world (also, he is going to be graduating me this year, and you don’t want to not vote for that person, just in case they drop a medieval mace on your head rather than the bit of velvet they’re supposed to use).  Anyway, since I don’t really live in St Andrews any more and have a better idea of the political issues in Cornwall than I do in Fife anyway, I thought I’d re-register at the ancestral home, where I would be living if I weren’t hiding out from the lack of Classics jobs at a research institute in Geneva.  I figured my vote would matter more there (see, St Ives’ Voter Power stats as opposed to North East Fife’s) and I would be more engaged, which I think is generally a good thing. However. I am attempting to engage and failing on many fronts – notably the fact that I cannot decide who to vote for. So, please to offer me any advice or opinions that you think I should consider as I decide.

These are my options:
Andrew George (LibDem) – St Ives MP since 1997. I once (1998, I think) did work experience with him in Westminster.  Website and Twitter.
Derek Thomas (Con) – He used to be my youth pastor when I was a teen (in the interests of full disclosure). Website and Twitter.
Philippa Latimer (Lab) – Website and Twitter.
Simon Reed (Mebyon Kernow) – Blog and Twitter.
Mick Faulkner (UKIP)
Tim Andrewes (Green) – Website (or web-presence)

So, that’s the bunch I have to decide between.  And here’s my problems/preferences.  I voted LibDem before, and I’ve generally had a fairly positive opinion of Andrew George until now.  However, the whole Digital Economy Bill has shaken my faith quite strongly – it’s not just that he didn’t even show up to vote, or debate, it’s that I didn’t even get an acknowledgement, let alone a considered response to my (long, not simply form) email to him about the bill.  I dislike that lack of engagement, and I’m beginning to think that he’s been too safe in the seat for too long and could use losing a chunk of his 10,00-and-change majority.  The LibDems, however, would be my party of choice, nationally – even despite their underwhelming lack of presence in practice in the vote on a bill they declared they opposed in principle (yes, the Digital Economy Bill again – btw, way to go convincing your potential supporters you’ll stand for what you believe in regardless of whether or not it’s going to pass guys). So I’m not sure I want Andrew George to lose the seat – but I would like him to lose enough of his majority to have to rethink the way he interacts with his constituents, especially the younger voters.  

This becomes more problematic as the candidate likely to challenge George most strongly is the Conservative – he’s local (which the constituency practically demands) and the conservatives have been coming second since they lost the seat to the LibDems in 1997.  Now, I like and respect Derek personally (though I he’s failed to convince me for 12-odd years that Tory is the way to go) and I know he does a lot of good work in the job he’s doing now (I also don’t necessarily want to see him give up that job to go into Parliament).  I would be inclined to vote for him as a human being and as someone who would speak up for the constituency if only he wasn’t the Conservative candidate – I have yet to see any good reason that makes me want to vote Conservative as long as the party is led by David Cameron with George Osborne as his first lieutenant. I neither like nor trust the pair of them – and while I’d like a change from the current government, I’m not sure the Conservatives wouldn’t be a change for the worse, especially on the economy (don’t stop spending – did you miss that bit in GCSE history where you cover the New Deal and learn about how the US economy went backwards when FDR stopped spending in the late 1930s? Also, Paul Krugman thinks stopping spending is a bad plan and, well, he’s actually an economist and one with a Nobel Prize… He sort of has authority in this field).

Labour. Ahhhh Labour. I’ve never been sure that Labour really understood the countryside and rural affairs very much, which doesn’t lead me to want to vote for them in a rural constituency.  They’ve also done that parachute-an-outsider into the constituency thing that worked so badly for the Tories in St Ives in the last two elections.  The Balking House blog can argue that we need an outside perspective on Cornish problems as much as it wants, but I fear what we’d get is an MP who is less likely to deviate from party lines to stand up for the constituency. That said if we were voting on digital issues (which clearly are an important part of my political engagements) – Latimer would probably come top of the class as she is the only one of the candidates with a twitter account who actually fully engages with other people.  Also, (and I may be the only person in the country saying it), I quite like Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. I definitely prefer him to David Cameron, and quite possibly to Nick Clegg.  I think he’s generally a decent human being who has been hamstrung/undone by the kind of politics that Blair, Campbell and Mandelson brought to the fore in 1997.  I would rather he didn’t attempt to like football to make people like him – and I’d rather not have a Prime Minister who wants me to like them more than he wants me to trust or respect them. I don’t want to have a beer with them, and I’d rather they were sorting out the NHS than watching football or caring about X-Factor.  Sometimes you have to give up life’s little pleasures (if whoever’s PM even considers them pleasures) to do your job (as opposed to being in a popularity contest all the time) – I just wish we as an electorate would let them do that.

And the remaining parties and candidates. Well, I’m not going within a million miles of UKIP, since I think that leaving the EU is (a) never going to happen and (b) a really bad idea anyway – so I’d rather whoever I vote for and whoever is in power is prepared to engage positively in Europe and fight to make it work better for us. Also, I wasn’t impressed by their candidate last time out.  Mebyon Kernow, similarly, I think are quite bonkers in their demand for self-determination and a legislative assembly in Cornwall. We’re not Scotland or Wales, sorry.  I like their desire to fight for Cornish issues – but I’d actually prefer them if they were an activism group rather than a political party.  Which leaves me with the Greens. I’m not horrifically unGreen, but neither am I actively Green. I have no objections to their manifesto as they’ve bullet-pointed it on their website, but I am underwhelmed by their lack of detail (although I freely admit I need to look more closely at a longer version sometime).  But – I’d feel a fraud at a Green party meeting, and so I’m not sure I want to vote for them.  I don’t think it would be wasting my vote necessarily, but they always seem so sincere that I might feel guilty tactically voting for them so that I don’t have to vote for a candidate who has ceased to engage me as an MP or for the Tory who I think is the only feasible alternative winner. 

So there we go – a long-winded exposition of why I have no idea who I want to vote for most(or least), and yet I refuse to either not vote or spoil my ballot. Can we R.O.N?