A shrug and a cross

A possible approach to elections is to vote for the person rather than the party. It’s not easy because our knowledge of candidates tends to be sketchy and distorted by party machines, but I’ve tried to assess our local general election candidates without reference to their respective parties.

In descending order of capability I rate them:-

Conservative

Labour

------------*

UKIP

Lib Dem

Green

* the dashed line indicates a substantial gap.

So although I’d prefer to vote UKIP as a quixotic protest, the two best candidates seem to be Conservative and Labour. Only a personal view gleaned from online information, social media etc, but I don’t see much difference between the two. Not only that, but locally we are likely to see a two horse race between them so a vote for either is worth more than a vote for the other three.

It’s a dilemma because I really don’t want to vote mainstream, but the other three candidates seem weak, including the UKIP candidate unfortunately. How I’ll vote I don’t yet know so I’ll probably wait until I’m actually in the voting booth hoping for some inspiration. Enthusiasm is too much to expect so it's probably a shrug and a cross for me.