It’s not a substitue for actually looking at your local candidates and their policies… nevertheless the Who Should You Vote For web site is a fun and not entirely useless starting point.
It asks you about a dozen questions to find out where you stand on political issues that are being debated in the current UK general election. Each party is then scored (on a scale from -9 to +9) for each policy question based on your views. The aggregate is used to rank which parties you should, and should not, vote for.
Apprently the party I should most vote is the Liberal Democrats. I am slightly surprised by this but then then the questions are based on topical election issues rather than trying to do a complete assessment of one’s political views.
Anyway, that means there’s one less excuse… though I would hasten to remind you that in UK general elections we are technically not voting for a governing party. We are actually expected vote for a candidate to represent our local constituency.
And yes, I haven’t completely ruled out standing as an independent candidate for Cities of London & Westminister. The latest news is that Edward Piggott is collecting signatures for my nomination form… if he gets it filled, I’ll stand.
"if he gets it filled,
"if he gets it filled, I’ll stand."
Why? What would be the purpose of standing?
I could understand doing it for the (learning) experience
but to really gain much you’d really want to experience more than 2
weeks campaigning with no prior planning (I assume). I could
understand doing it to raise awareness of a particular issue(s) but
then you’d really want to milk all the campaigning time you can get to
be effective. So why stand, on a whim, at late notice, like this?
I am interested because Dave P and Ed P accosted me in the bar with your form. I asked them "why?" and their reply was just gibberish to me. Like, gibberish that’s fun to bandy-about in the bar but does not a parliamentery candidate make. Or perhaps it does. Perhaps I am being presumptious.