How to vote in the UK general election - if you believe in freedom

Even last night it would appear as many as 20-30% of voters are STILL undecided. So here is a guide to vote, for those who don’t believe the government should do more for them, for those who don’t believe in higher taxes and think, by and large, government should focus on protecting the country and protecting citizens from the initiation of force and fraud from each other.

Step One: Decide what voting means for you. If it is about granting moral authority to someone to be in government, then you might find yourself with limited choices. If it is about choosing the least worst option, then it is easier. If it is about making a statement of values closest to your own, then again the choices are limited. If it is about choosing an individual, then it will be luck as to whether you have a good choice or not.

You see if you want to grant moral authority, then you are saying “I agree with enough of your manifesto, to accept you have my endorsement to implement the lot, and make decisions outside that based on your principles”. If you do that, then you have less reason to complain if the winner is the party you endorsed, and it acts as it said it would. You always can have your opinion and express it, but I will simply be able to say “well you said it was ok for xxx to govern”. Bear in mind that it is mainly party members and enthusiasts who should fit that camp.

If you want to choose the least worst option, then you wont find it difficult. It is how most people vote in my view. You hold your nose, and you decide X because at least it keeps Y out (which is worse). If you believe that way, then prepare to be disappointed. Is X REALLY that much better? Or is it that Y is SO bad, that you can’t imagine X being worse? Bear in mind also that by doing this you are saying it is ok for X to govern you. The least worst option also means choosing a government, which means picking a party likely to win in your seat.

If you just want to make a statement of values, then it is a middle ground. You are not granting moral authority, you are not succumbing to the least worst option, but selecting a party that reflects part of your values at least. That is what I did.

Finally, if there is a candidate who personally represents your values and is in a party where he or she might have a chance to spread that influence, then go ahead, positively endorse that candidate. Good luck finding one though.

Step Two: Check out your constituency. If it is a safe seat then you can at least know you’re either endorsing an encumbent who is likely to win, or you can vote for any other candidate knowing there is next to no chance of that person actually wielding power.

If it is a marginal seat then some will suggest “tactical voting”, but frankly unless you are on the left of the political spectrum it is fairly meaningless. Only in Buckingham, where the Tory Speaker faces no challenge from the main parties, have you got any real alternative (UKIP candidate Nigel Farage, hospitalised overnight from a plane crash) if you don’t believe in socialism. A Labour-LibDem marginal may as well be a safe seat for either of them. A marginal with the Conservatives may make your decision a little more difficult, unless the candidate is a Green in disguise (Zac Goldsmith) or a thief (see the full guide to the expenses claimed by them all).

Step Three: Hold your nose and choose. If you believe in less government, more individual freedom and personal responsibility, then you might consider this list:

1. Where there is a Libertarian Party candidate or one endorsed by the LPUK, or an independent libertarian, give him or her a tick. None are likely to win, but you will be voting against the status quo of big government. If you have no such option then…

2. Where there is a Conservative Party candidate who speaks, writes and talks fluently about free markets, who has not bought into the anti-human agenda of the radical environmentalists and who talks more about less government than about how government can help, then consider voting for that candidate. For the foreseeable future, the Conservative Party is the only major party with a wing of members who DO believe in freedom and less government. Endorsing those who can move it away from the pablum of populism that is currently dished out is a positive step.

3. If there is no inspiring Conservative Party candidate, then if you think you must vote for someone, then consider the UKIP candidate. UKIP believe in flat tax, leaving the EU (but retaining free trade with it) and in cutting state spending to the level it was in 1997. That is enough of a platform to give the Conservatives a message if they do not win a majority, that compromise to the left means losing votes from the core.

4. Finally, if your Conservative candidate is odious, and your UKIP candidate is really a complete wingnut who would be better placed in the BNP (and so should lose his deposit), then write in “John Galt”. It wont count, but one person will look at it and probably ask “Who is John Galt”? and will remember it, briefly. You will then have said, to hell with you all, but you might consider standing for Parliament next time.

5. Oh and if you are in Ulster, then you have a very different choice. You might simply choose to opt out of picking between parties of sectarianism. The Alliance Party is the main party that rejects unionism and nationalism, but it is aligned with the Liberal Democrats. Bear in mind that what happens in Ulster may end up influencing the government, but your choices are not ones to envy.

Whatever happens tonight, it will be a long night. It may well match the 1996 New Zealand election, with Nick Clegg playing Winston Peters, and David Cameron and Gordon Brown playing Jim Bolger and Helen Clark.

I intend to party with some like mindeds from down under, to celebrate every time someone odious loses. What am I hoping for? For Labour to come third in proportion of the vote (or to do worse than in 1983), for the Liberal Democrats to not hold the balance of power, for Nigel Farage to win in Buckingham, for Nick Griffin to come third or worse in Barking, for Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalists to lose heavily, for the Green Party to win nothing, for Ed Balls to lose the seat he is contesting, Old Holborn to win Cambridge, and for the Conservatives to ever so barely miss out on a majority.

Sod them all, none of them deserve to govern.

What the UK election will tell you about Britain

With at least 60% of the electorate likely to support the two major leftwing parties, Liberal Democrats and Labour, it becomes clear that Margaret Thatcher didn’t fundamentally reform attitudes towards the state during her administration, what she did was reform the economy and wind the clock back, somewhat.

However, the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the British public carry a view of the state that I characterise as being supportive of the nanny state. The relationship those people have with the state is either being a co-parent, or as a dependent child.

Those who see the state from the view of a child are scared they’ll lose “their benefit” “their NHS” “their school”. They can’t envisage looking after their own health care, selecting schools, selecting retirement plans or actually paying for what they use. They are the dependent underclass, and comprise perhaps as much as 15-20% of the population. People who don’t think there is any other way. They are brought up loving the Labour Party, almost in the mould of North Korean propaganda, that they owe their house, their education, their health and their employment to the Labour Party. Without the Labour Party paternalistically supplying all of this (who cares where the money comes from) it is a terrifying brutal world indeed.

The myth built around it is the classic Marxist binary view. Them or Us. Because the Labour Party pays for Us, and supports Us, then the Conservative Party must pay for Them and support Them. Labour gives the underclass money, so surely the Conservatives must make things so the rich get richer. This is the repulsive lie manipulated and used by politicians on the left.

Not for one moment is it argued that the tax paid by the wealthier is what pays for Us, or that businesses create the majority of jobs and the money that pays for Us. More insidiously, it is not argued that the “rich” (a catchall for anyone middle class and above) earned their money, but rather there is a focus on inheritance, and on privilege. That those who are financially successful somehow got there through luck, rather than through effort or intelligence. You see the overwhelming myth is that without Labour, you are nothing, cannot be anything and the rich will get what you are getting now – forgetting that the vast bulk of what the government spends comes from the “rich”. The dominant theme of the campaign in the past few weeks has been to concentrate on getting that base of supporters out to vote, purely out of fear of the alternative. The BNP caters for these same children, who blame the "new kids" for getting more with a sneering disdain for big business and immigration generally. The BNP comprises the local bullies, whereas Labour makes friends with the immigrant underclass and says "you can have some too".

While that is all understandable, what about the rest? What about the 40-50% of voters who also vote to the left. Well they are not children in the state-citizen relationship, but supportive parents. These are people who, on the face of it, would admit they can choose the school for their kids, they could buy health insurance and retirement incomes, and could pretty much make their own decisions for themselves and their families. However, they all would say "what about everyone else?"

That is the point, when the bulk of middle class voters think, the state needs to look after the "children" I mentioned before - the underclass. "You can’t leave them to their own devices." In other words, it nurtures the “what about the people who couldn’t” view, pointing at how so many of the underclass are living grossly unhealthy lifestyles, bearing in mind that they are demonstrably unable to look after themselves.

They treat their fellow adults as children, they buy homes to avoid the underclass, and want to give them opportunities at best, and to lock them away at worst. Meanwhile, they too also want “their share” of nanny state, in tax credits, middle class welfare and the like. They support universalism so they can get some of their taxes back, because you see, they DO pay for themselves indirectly. They advocate the nanny state, but want their cut, increasing the overall cost.

So you see, it is about the dependency of the infantile, and the belief by the self-appointed nannies in the wisdom of the state “sorting out” the poor and the feckless. That essentially comprises the majority of British voters, who are one or the other.

It is both these attitudes that believers in small government and individual freedom need to address. For the “children”, it is about a transition to encourage them to “grow up”, give them opportunities to make more choices, not tax them, and increase the incentives to abandon what should be a shift from the welfare state to self sufficiency and private benevolent initiatives. For the “grownups” who want to help them, it is about taking away their own middle class welfare privileges in exchange for tax cuts, and encouraging those who wish to help others to do so, more directly, and in this perhaps some of the elements of the poorly named “Big Society” of David Cameron may have some merit. If you are concerned about the homeless, then don’t let the government fix the problem, do something yourself.

How are both these attitudes confronted? I don’t know. I don’t think it is about surrendering, as the Conservatives have largely done. However, until both are confronted and the concerns and views answered clearly, there will be next to no chance of ever electing a government that will consciously have a mandate to shrink the size of the state.

EC warns Britain of its public debt

Well you'd wonder why the European Commission is saying that the UK's budget deficit will be the highest in Europe, at over 12% of GDP.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

"The first thing a new government has got to do is to agree a convincing and detailed programme of debt consolidation," Olli Rehn, the EU's economic and monetary affairs commissioner said.

"It is by far the foremost challenge for a new government. I trust that whatever the colour of the government it will do this."

All of the main parties are continuing to evade this. Gordon Brown apparently believes that spending can't be cut this year, because it will threaten the recovery because it pulls money out of the economy, although with the same breath he is INCREASING taxes (because that pulls money out of the economy, for him to spend).

So figure out for yourself how the government spending less is bad for the economy, but the government taking more out of the economy in taxes is good for it, unless you have the ideological belief that government spending is always better than private spending.

Quite why anyone can give this man any credibility on the British economy is beyond belief.

Add that to the odd claim by Gordon Brown last week that "Labour has built schools, hospitals and roads, so there is no need to continue with more capital spending", when most of those who (incorrectly) argue for pump priming recession filled economies with state spending say it should go on capital items LIKE roads which generate net economic benefits.

So what about the UK libertarians?

I'm going to be generous. The UK Libertarian Party is young, having been founded on 1 January 2008. It has two candidates in this general election, and two endorsed independent candidates (and two local candidates as there are some local elections as well). So it is only a small start.

However, although I criticised it for being very timid a short while ago (ACT is radical by comparison), it is a start on a path towards selling freedom, unambiguously, to the British public. Whether it is the right one is another point.

An alternative to a party is a lobby group/think tank, like the Libertarian Alliance. Sean Gabb has written recently on why the Conservatives are a waste of effort, but that he will be voting for the Conservatives holding his nose at the same time.

However, the outcome of the election is far from certain. Psephologists can be fascinated by the possibilities, but for you just try the BBC election seat calculator. See if you can put Labour in third of the popular vote but with the highest number of seats!

Conservatives only green on the outside?

You'd have thought with the Conservatives believing in anthropomorphic climate change, wanting to strangle aviation, wanting to subsidise windfarms, embracing nuclear power, subsidising railways and keen on recycling, that the statist collectivist environmentalist movement would at least say there is nothing offensive here. It may not be enough for many, but you'd think that it would be a matter of degree.

No. Enemies of the Humans Friends of the Earth apparently approached Conservative candidates, and only FOUR of the 635 contacted would sign up to the pledges of that lobby group. This compares with 95 Labour candidates, 179 Liberal Democrats and unsurprisingly 267 Green candidates.

Maybe the Tories aren't so beholden to the environmentalist agenda after all? Maybe the candidates have simply decided the public are not interested in being told what to do at a time of severe economic recession.

What FOE wants is as follows:

Policy 1: A local carbon budget for every local authority that caps CO2 in the local area in line with the scientific demands for emissions cuts and local circumstances; and enough money and technical support to enable councils to do their bit to tackle climate change.

Quite how this is to be paid for is ignored - blank out.

Policy 2: Sufficient investment in switching to a low carbon economy to achieve a reduction in UK greenhouse gas emission of 42 per cent by 2020; create jobs and boost the recovery; and eliminate fuel poverty.

Again, uncosted, no way to pay for it.

Policy 3: An international deal on cutting emissions where those responsible make the deepest cuts first, and developing countries are supported to grow in a low carbon way.

The old chestnut that somehow the developing countries need do nothing, but developed countries must sacrifice. Those developing countries with high GDPs per capita and high emissions are ignored.

Policy 4: A new law which will tackle the major greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation caused by the UK’s dependence on imported feeds for livestock - and which will support better UK farming and domestic feed production.

Trade protectionism in other words. Quite how this fits into EU membership would be beyond FOE.

So only a fool would sign up to these pledges.

Fortunately, FOE publishes a list of the fools. In the Conservatives, millionaire pretty boy who is looking for a meaning to life, Zac Goldsmith (Richmond). Maria Caulfield (Caerphilly), Robert Walter (MP for North Dorset) and Jessica Lee (Erewash). No excuse to vote Conservative in any of THOSE seats now.

I wont believe the end to the Greenwash until the Conservatives backtrack on blindly opposing the expansion of Heathrow. Wrecking the growth of an entire sector of the economy just to win a few votes from NIMBYs in West London is the alternative, but then they are politicians who want power.