Nominations for the general election close on Thursday, if you are wondering who has declared already then click on
this link to find the details of candidates in Morecambe and Lunesdale. If you live in another constituency follow the link and then search for your own.
There are many reasons why this election is so mind numbingly tedious, two of the main reasons are closely related, which comes first is debateable. In my view the first reason is that so many people think it's fine to merely abuse politicians and those working for political parties, be they paid or voluntary. The lazy assumption is that they are all in it for the money, or for sheer power and status. This leads to reasonable people increasingly withdrawing from political activity thus leaving politics in the hands of the few, often people who fall into the categories in my first point. It's been almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This means that we now have a breed of political activist, especially parliamentary candidates, who are incapable of serious political thought and blindly follow the leader or the party line. Anybody who slightly deviates from 'the message' is likely to be dumped pretty rapidly. This means that there is little serious debate on policy within the main political parties, policy development is done by specialist units of professional politicos behind closed doors in consultation with only the most senior people in the party.
I attended several Tory Party conferences in the 1980s and there were some really impressive policy debates, especially on the conference fringe and ordinary people, rightly or wrongly, felt that they had a voice and influence within the party, but couldn't initiate or change policy.
During the 1980s Labour Party members actually had the power to change policy at their party conferences. It was Neil Kinnock who started the castration of the Labour Party membership when fighting the threat from the militants/trade unions in the 1980s. Labour members now have as much influence over policy as Conservative members, they can no longer change or initiate policy at their conference.
The main parties now look to the media and the professional think tanks to formulate policy, the wishes of the electorate come way, way down their list of priorities. The EU, capital punishment and immigration are three main areas that highlight how the electorate has been ignored. Poll after poll suggests that over many years the populace has been ignored on these issues. The establishment has taken the view that it knows best.
We now have, thanks to political correctness, the tyranny of the minorities which has been extremely divisive and has fractured social cohesion. This is almost exclusively down to the left and the Labour Party. From 1997 to 2010 Labour had an open door immigration policy which has led to huge social problems, especially in our major cities. Labour/socialists then tell numerous ethnic groups that they are under threat from evil fascists but they will defend them. Guess who said ethnic minorities then support and vote for?
The Labour/socialists have done the same with gays, women, the disabled and any number of other groups which has led to women only shortlists for parliament and quotas/targets in the workplace and education for assorted minorities. There has been a black lad on the TV news this morning claiming that he wouldn't be voting in the election because there weren't enough black and/or working class candidates. That always makes me wonder what black MPs would do that a white MP wouldn't? What would a working class MP do that a middle class MP wouldn't? Personally I just want the best MP for the job, if that's a black working class woman fine by me. If it's a white, working class gay bloke then fine, I don't care as long as they can do the job.
So to Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency and we hardly have an inspiring group of candidates up to now for the election. We have a sitting MP who seems to have alienated just about every person of a conservative persuasion that I know, more a lap dog for Cameron than a free thinking, get up and at 'em politician.
The Labour candidate is a councillor in Hulme, Manchester but bizarrely described as a 'local champion' on her election material. She also claims to have been running an anti-poverty campaign for twenty years, so for fifteen years she was fighting poverty under a Labour government, rather bizarre too. She also describes herself as a 'Common Purpose graduate'. I find Common Purpose an unpleasant and worryingly influential organisation but don't subscribe to the wackier conspiracy theories about it that abound on the internet. I'll leave it for you to find out for yourself, there is lots about them on the internet.
So there we have it. Oh yes, sorry I forgot, we also have a Green Party candidate but suspect the people of this constituency are too sane to waste many votes on him, and we have a typically bland Liberal Democrat, neither of them have bothered with a leaflet yet. We also have a UKIP candidate and I've heard there is a Northern Party candidate, a party of which I know little other than they sound like the bastard offspring of the Greens and Labour with an odd Tory cobbed in for good measure.
It's not an inspiring election, and our choice of candidates at the moment is even less inspiring. Still, two days yet to close of nominations and who knows who might pop up by Thursday.
