Rob's handy cut-out-and-chuck 2015 Election guide.

In order of easy dismissal...

UKIP. If you vote for them you're an idiot or a bigot or, of course, both. They can't keep getting away with "oh it's just a bad egg" every time one of their councillors makes an idiotic racist remark or blames gays for flooding. That's who they are. Stop believing that just because he's got a pint in his hand Nigel Farage is anything other than a self-serving corrupt (expenses from Brussels to fund his party) tosspot. In his debates over Europe he argued, erroneously, that most law comes from Brussels, and stated, erroneously, that they (herrble ferrners) forced us (decent British chaps) to accept gay marriage. So, we should pull out of Europe so we can be more bigoted. Nice one, Nigel. Anyone thinking you support civil liberties should think again.

Right, one down. Now the Conservatives. Selfish bastards the lot of them, conning you thinking you might someday be part of the wealthy elite getting their cuts and contracts while also reducing social mobility, unless you're a white upper-middle class family wanting to teach little Quentin how evolution is a myth, climate change isn't happening, and trickle-down economics ever works. And for the record, selfishness and greed aren't good - they're exactly what they say. JK Galbraith said it right: "the modern conservative is engaged in one of mankind's oldest pursuits - that of finding ever more elaborate justifications for selfishness". It's wrong, boys and girls - cooperation makes the world work, not competition.

Labour. Well, once upon a time this party was socialist and believed that natural monopolies that constituted necessities in life should be publicly owned and not used to cream off profits while the services get worse. That time has gone. All through the eighties I said it would all be all right when we got a Labour government. That time never came. As a great revolutionary said... "The revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas courageously, define their principles and express their intentions so that no one is deceived, neither friend nor foe.". Labour haven't done that in a generation.

Liberal Democrats. Sigh. There was a time when the Liberals were left-wing (as an aside, left and right come from the French revolution when some of the revolutionaries sat on either side of a hall - how arbitrary is that?) and believed in civil liberties, which none of the above do.  It was the Liberals who managed to legalise abortion in this country, for example. They have restricted the worst excesses of allowing more surveillance in this government, but then there is the tuition fee, which oddly if now reduced would actually benefit the rich more. (I'm in favour of free education, obviously, because I'd like the next generation to be educated and not comprised of right-wing dullards, and it's well established that more education leads to progressive politics, which is probably why Republicans in the US want to discourage people going to university and believe that everything coming out of big universities and scientific committees are liberal conspiracies)

SNP: If they're standing near you, vote for them. If nothing else they want to remove the idiotic multi-billion pound spending on Trident (or replacement) - a system which we could and should never use, whose only purpose is so our Prime Minister can go willy-waving claiming we're still a great power. We're not. Get used to it.

Plaid Cymru: see the SNP, but less squeaky. Come on, Wales - squeak more.

Green: Right, since you bunch of idiots (you, not the Greens) rejected electoral reform, they've got no chance of getting in, at least in most areas, so you end up with a choice to waste your vote now in the hope that within twenty years they will become the second place party and be the ones other people vote for despite not wanting, or vote somewhere else. The Greens state that the exponential growth model of economics cannot last, which is true and obvious, but most people don't want to accept because it might make their morning latte cost a little more and it's scary.


Voting has become like being shown several truckloads of food just from a glance at the back door. You look at each and reject the one with rotting fish, but the others all seem to contain a surprising quantity of Spam and Fray Bentos pies. One looks quite nice, but everyone has to agree and every one else has already complained that it's too veggie for them. So you choose one, knowing you'll be forced at gunpoint to eat all the contents. But that's the system that you chose, rejecting electoral reform. You and the US, alone among developed nations, can't cope with more than two choices and a big cross.


I despair for you all. I predict five more years of ineffectual government making themselves and their friends rich. I'll be in the pub. See you in five years. Glad I could help.