can i just ask a serious question as a naive voter please?
say you wanted ed miliband to win election cos you thought his policies would be best for britain. yet youre in rachels ‘ward'(?) and think she’d do more for your local area, or you hated your local labour bod.
who do you vote for? spose what im asking is…..do you vote local or national?
[EDIT] this has been my one and only election post, just something i wondered the other day. on the whole i try and stay away from it all.
Agreed, it’s tricky – I’ve always thought a lot of people who’ll stand for Parties other than Lab/Con – you don’t join the Green Party hoping to be PM one day, so you can probably remove the “lust for power” bit of their drive for standing, but..
Ultimately maybe not tomorrow, but in a week or so either Ed or Dave will be PM, of that there is little doubt – and the party in power will usually have more of an impact on your day to day life than the party of your MP and if you want your local area to matter to Westminster, you’re better off having an MP as a member of the ruling party – actually it’s better to be in a marginal seat – safe seats no one really cares about.
HOWEVER, the main parties do carefully consider how many votes the smaller parties get and it can influence their polices, partly to counter the chances on these smaller parties becoming bigger in the 90’s and 2000s the Green Party grew, so the main parties cared more about environmental policies, now UKIP is on the rise you hear more about immigration and Europe from the main parties.
If you vote for Rachel, she may not win (hope you do Rachel, you seem nice) but the overall number of green votes this time around will influence the government – a green surge (which is expected) will push Green Party style policies forward with the Government.