My Dilemma……

……was whether to vote at all and if so which way to cast my vote. At every local and general election that I have been able to, I have voted yet this time I did not know whether to use it. Usually I have exercised the right to vote, partly because it is a right that took a lot of blood and tears to be won. Partly because it is as Rousseau alluded the one time when we are truly free: “The people of England thinks itself free; but it is free only during the parliamentary elections. As soon as they are over, slavery overtakes them, and they are nothing. The use they make of the brief moments of liberty shows indeed that it deserves to lose it.”

How else are we to explain the fact that one of the most rotten governments and indeed parliaments still sits while the public was raging at the scandal of expenses?

A scandal which, this needs reiterating, engulfs all parties. One which seeing everyone scrambling to show how ‘honest’ they are. Labour and Gordon Brown are keen to argue that as they are in Government they can best put a system in place to prevent this happening again. Fixing the system. Lets leave aside for a minute the system, as worded, is actually fine and rather it is the individual MP’s own sense of moral propriety. Sadly it seems a fairly large number seem to have a very low sense of propriety.

To add to the mix, Hazel Blears one of the major examples of playing the system lottery, resigned in a move calculated to cause maximum damage to her mortal enemy Gordon Brown. There are yet more cabinet resignations with James Purnell’s departure this evening. The results of the elections will surely finish Gordon Brown.

However, I give a warning to Blears, Purnell et al in the Labour Party. Be careful what you wish for. In my mind, while I acknowledge we have a PARTY system and not a PRESIDENTIAL system and thus it is parties, which ultimately choose the Prime Minister (the leader of the winning party), not the public, two changes of PM without a general election is unthinkable. An election now is the worst thing for the country and will be a disaster for Labour. Seen as self-serving, torn by division, the only thing Labour will get is a hammering in the polls. A rampant Conservative government would be installed with a large majority and the whole swing from one elective dictatorship to another will begin anew. Not what the country needs; over emboldened governments faced by feeble oppositions.

,Labour should be trying to get to the set election date. By then, they might have some good news on which to fight a rearguard action. They will lose the next election. That is certain. However, an election fought with some economic recovery, due towards the end of the election cycle could enable Labour to rally to a stronger opposition hand than if they go now. Blears and Purnell are just committing acts of reckless treachery, acts that I hope will be rectified at the next general election. As for my vote? I exercised my right and looking at the carnage of this evening I am glad I did.