On the Horns of a dilemma
I’m coming toward a moment of decision.
I got my postal vote today and I’m going to have to decide what to do with it.
Now, normally I’d have no difficulty. Not only are the LibDems the largest English party that is firmly saying they are against Brexit (the issue of the hour, I think you’ll agree) but they also favour electoral reform, the only thing I can think that might prevent the sort of political paralysis we’ve seen in the past two years and the right wing entryism that led up to it.
I don’t favour their whole program: the current LibDems are too right wing for me but if you insist on absolute ideological identification with your chosen party you’ll either never vote at all or lose your own identity in the fleeting and ever changing one of the organisation.
But, but, but….
My friend Chris whispered in my ear when she was driving me back from her and Roger’s place last week that Labour could, maybe, just possibly have a chance of winning this one and deposing that odious git, Steve Baker, our current Tory MP and the chair of the ERG. Oh, the seductress and her silken words!
Certainly on the evidence of the last two elections Labour is a lot more popular in the constituency than the LibDems.
Trouble is if I vote for Labour then I’m encouraging them to think that I approve of all their policies and stances whereas I only want Steve Baker gone and there not to be another Conservative government.
Their leader is precisely the sort of tedious left-winger I felt depressed by in the 1980s and their stance on Brexit is Schrodinger’s stance: we can’t know what it is until we open the box… I won’t comment on the anti-semitism though I’m sure it’s there. The left is as subject to conspiracy theory thinking as the right and conspiracy theories always smell of anti-semitism.
My ideal situation has Labour needing the co-operation of other parties to form a government.
But I don’t get to make that decision because of our accursed electoral system. Which Labour is also bad on.
No, I’m not going to tell you what I decide: I just want you to sympathise with my agony.
Asleep in Room3b 
Perhaps it will make your decision easier to remember that, when they were given a chance to change the daft voting system to something more sensible, the party that wants it changed stood back and allowed their supposed partners to sabotage the referendum campaign without a word of protest. (As well, more generally, as the public image they’d spend thirty-odd years building up.) This does not speak well for their competence at the basic business of politics.