So much is going on in our land and yet I have little to say. I used to be known in my circles for having an opinion on everything. I rather despised the kind of indecisive person I now find myself to be. So this post is unique among all the hundreds I have written here. I am not telling you what I think. I am asking you what I should do. I am lost. Please guide me.
I have never before been in the position of not knowing how to vote in a General Election. It has been a long time since I was young and daft enough to identify with the programme of any prospective government, but I have always been pragmatic enough to know which would do the least damage. This time I just wish all the rascals could lose. The conduct of our politicians, civil servants and the rest of the Establishment has destroyed my last vestiges of faith in our democracy. I feel that voting at all will only give credence to a monstrous lie.
I have donated to, and am a registered supporter of, the Brexit Party. It has done a remarkable job of holding the government's feet to the fire over Brexit but the public now seems (perhaps from sheer exhaustion) to want to believe the Prime Minister's propaganda. Running a full campaign won't "split the Brexit vote" because the Conservatives are proposing Brexit in name only. It won't "cost us Brexit" because the Conservatives have already done that. It just risks validating the Goebbels-grade lies of the Remain ultras by making it seem that the vote to Leave was an aberration.
If the Conservatives accepted Nigel Farage's offer of a "Leave Alliance", voters in the naturally Labour seats in the North that are BXP's best hope would just view their candidates as Tories in sheep's clothing and vote accordingly.
If Labour win, it will be bad for our economy. We will also lose our place in the councils of the West. It will not be possible, for example, safely to share intelligence with a country led by someone sympathetic to our enemies. Other Western intelligence services will use us only as a channel for what the Russians call мистификация (mistifikatsiya – i.e disinformation). Anything they are prepared to tell us will be, by definition, untrue because they will expect it to be promptly passed to Corbyn's "friends".
The only reasons (for me) to vote Labour would be (a) to punish the Conservative Party for the appalling mess it has made of the last few years and (b) to give a younger generation stupidly scornful of the lessons of history modern proof of the economic and moral dangers of socialism. That the single most stupid idea in the history of political and economic thought is popular among the young is so horrifying that enduring a few years of it in practice might be worth it to try to save them.
There is no reason to vote Liberal Democrat. None. My only purpose in mentioning that abomination of a Party is to experience, briefly and nostalgically, the sense of political certainty I used to enjoy.
In my London constituency, with a high percentage of Remainers (and a minority of voters actually born on these windswept islands) a vote for the Brexit Party would be a protest. Most of my fellow-voters here have neither an understanding of, nor an affection for, the traditions, ideas and legal principles upon which our country was built. The contest will therefore be between the third-rate Leftist sociology lecturer (apologies for the multiple tautologies) who is the current Labour MP and whatever candidate the Liberal Democrats put up. It was a Conservative seat when I moved here eight years ago, but the Tories have no chance in this Brexit election.
Brexit apart, there is simply no point in a Conservative Party that has abandoned all the distinguishing features of conservative thought. I hate it more than the others because it's the party that ought to reflect my economic views most closely, but now doesn't. I expect to be despised, betrayed and robbed by the others. It hurts more from them.
It has abandoned its principles in the fruitless pursuit of votes from Guardianisti. As any fool might have predicted, however, they simply continue to characterise as "cuts" and "austerity" increases in government spending less than they claim would have been made by their tribe. The Conservative Party has increased public spending, increased public debt, sucked up to the merchants of division purveying identity politics and – in relation to Brexit – has betrayed democracy. It's not even a patriotic party any more. What the hell is it for?
Even if I overcome my hatred and revulsion, a vote for the Conservative Party will be wasted – and not just in my constituency. If the Party wins a majority the Brexit mess will continue for years. The Withdrawal Agreement is not merely unsatisfactory, but only (and few voters seem to grasp this) the first stage in a process of negotiating unequal treaties with the EU that will continue for years. Brussels has no incentive to move quickly as it earns massively from our continued membership without (once the WA has been signed) having to take any political account of our views. I simply don't trust the Conservative Party to conduct those continuing negotiations in our best interests. There is certainly nothing in its behaviour for the past four years that suggests it knows, or cares, what those interests are. The most perfect personification of a modern British Conservative is John Bercow. Need I say more?
The only reason to vote Conservative is to wipe the smug smiles off the sneering, contemptuous faces of the anti-democrats who have sabotaged the biggest, clearest political decision of my lifetime. However that pleasure would only last for the few weeks before it becomes apparent that we are not breaking free from the EU and that we will be held in the closest possible regulatory alignment with it so as to ease re-entry to full membership in future – without any of the opt-outs we currently enjoy.
Once more, in this election, whomever I vote for "Party X" will win. The only thing I can be sure of is that no candidate with any chance of winning will have the slightest respect for justice, fairness and morality – as I understand them. So what, gentle readers, should I do?