Why I'm standing on May 5th

The nominations for the 2011 High Peak Borough council election have been released, and the eagle eyed among you may have noticed that my name is among them – standing for the Lib Dems in Simmondley.

I have been a member of the Lib Dems for a number of years, but it may seem odd to some of you that I have decided to throw my hat into the ring at a time when the party is getting its greatest ever kicking. After years of supporting football teams who are famously on their uppers, has my predilection for supporting the downtrodden underdog taken hold of me again? Well, maybe a little.

Some of the criticism the party has received has been justified. I’ve already mentioned on this blog that the legacy of the student fees debacle is more than just an obscene annual charge on students, because let’s face it Labour would have upped the fees that they introduced anyway. The main damage was that having sold the party as one that would keep the promises it made, our MPs destroyed that faith within months of coming into office by ignoring a pledge they all signed pre-election. We are now just the same as the rest of them.

What is unfair though is how the Lib Dems are perceived to be to blame for all that is wrong with this government. I would ask people to think what it may have been like had the Tories won outright, as they damn well nearly did. Starting with those fees, I very much doubt there would have been a cap on how much a university could charge, nor rules on accessibility in place. We can be sure that personal allowances would not have risen by £1000 today, taking an estimated 500,000 low earners out of the tax system completely.

That disparity is partly why I'm standing for the Lib Dems, although in truth I'm not sure that there's much of a need for party politics at borough council level. Party loyalties matter much less than the character of the people you vote for the lower down the scale you go. Rather than vote blindly in support of your usual party, check out the person. I'm most definitely a nice guy, in case you were wondering.

The other part is that the upcoming referendum has reminded me of the major reason why I joined the Lib Dems in the first place - their steadfast belief in Proportional Representation. I have always firmly believed that no one party has the perfect manifesto and that there are snippets from each that would run the perfect country. In short, I believe in consensus politics. Too much power in one party without someone applying a handbrake so that they can at the very least reflect on their ideology is, in my view, a bad thing.

So, the AV referendum matters. At the last election, despite being a member of a political party, I had to consider very carefully whether or not I should vote for them. What a nonsense. Every vote should count, and each should be cast for the party whose policies you agree with the most. Is that really too much to ask? It has always struck me as proper democracy.

So, although there has been a last minute conversion by some of the Labour party, I think it is right that I represent the party who have argued tooth and nail for some sort of PR for as long as I have been able to vote (and longer). AV is not perfect, but it is a start. So even if you don't vote for me on May 5th, at the very least I hope you can vote for that, and make sure every subsequent vote you cast afterwards is (another) one that matters.