Why I'm voting for the evil Tories

Since some of you have asked...these are my main reasons.

Labour's Manifesto

Let's get one thing out of the way. Labour's manifesto is not - despite their repeated claims - "fully costed". Far from it. It outlines a huge program of nationalisation, including energy infrastructure. Where is the cost of that? All we get is a headline figure (£250 billion). It would be no small achievement even to guess at how much it would take to nationalise the National Grid. The National Grid has a Net Asset Value of over £20 billion (2017 accounts) and that's before you consider the cost of administration to actually take it into public ownership. I don't actually think it's reasonable to expect a manifesto to be "fully" costed, but claiming it is when it's not is simply a lie (isn't that behaviour meant to be Tory-owned?).

We all want things to be better

Despite the personal attacks, the vast majority of people don't want anyone suffering in poverty or poor health, we just have very different views on who should take responsibility, what gets priority and who should pay. You make a big mistake by ascribing these views to malice and miss any opportunity to alter these views (would you listen to someone who disregarded your true motives and simply called you evil or reptilian?).

Labour want to help people (like me) who don't need it

When Labour push policies that would benefit the minority of people who go to university, or save well-off parents the expense of school meals (paid for by parents who have to pay for school places they don't use), it doesn't exactly say "wise and fair" to me.

Corbyn's lack of leadership

The inability of Corbyn and his close colleagues to lead a vaguely united Labour party since he took his post must be a cause for concern. It doesn't matter how well intentioned they might be; even amazing ideas won't help if you can't deliver them and to do that you have to take people with you. It's all the more worrying with important negotiations looming. Corbyn has been a career-long fervent supporter of unilateral disarmament and has voted against the UK remaining in the European Community in 1975, against the Maastricht treaty and against the Lisbon treaty. And yet he failed to take his party with him on these two significant points of principle and Labour's official policy has been to remain in the EU and secure the future of Trident. That makes him a rather compromised idealist in my view.

His performance over the last couple of weeks has improved dramatically; a change emphasised by May's abysmal campaign performance, but to be honest an election campaign isn't an environment I expected either of them to excel at and ultimately isn't what matters. What matters is what I think they'll really do in office, and I just don't believe Labour's plans are realistic, and I don't believe their leadership can deliver.

Leadership particularly matters in this election as we are about to negotiate Brexit. Added to this is the apparent desire to show the EU all our cards before we even get to the table. Nobody is suggesting we make EU nationals leave, but promising this up-front to the EU without a reciprocal arrangement makes absolutely no negotiating sense. Why not use it for leverage? If the EU are so reasonable, surely a simple reciprocal arrangement on current UK and EU nationals living abroad should be trivial to agree? If not then all the more reason to keep our cards close to our chest. Why tell the EU that no matter what they do we'll take the deal? Enough of the mis-characterisation that "no deal is a good deal". The point is simply to say "there are deals that aren't good enough, there are deals that are, we are prepared to walk away if we have to, so let's sit down and work out something better in our mutual interest". Without the credible threat of walking away there is no negotiation; the EU can simply dictate what they want. They have a lot to lose. We are the 3rd biggest net contributor. They've indicated how much they'd be hurting; to the tune of €100 billion.

May's far from perfect

There's plenty I'm not happy about with May's Conservatives. Her expressed views on the internet and encryption fly in the face of logic. Her suggestions with respect to human rights law were ill-expressed at best. Why on earth - even if she thinks fox hunting is the best thing ever - she would prioritise lifting the hunting ban is beyond me. Which individual votes switch to Tory for that? Net votes even less so.

For a moment I thought she'd made a truly smart move with a policy to stop enabling people to keep hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of house for their children at the expense of the tax payer and instead allow them to pay for their own care, without having to give up anything while they're still alive. Essentially this was taking from the same people that Labour want to take from and giving back to the same people Labour want to give to, but in very fair way and at a time when the people it's most likely to annoy are least likely to vote any other way than Tory. She could have capitalised on opposition hypocrisy. It was a big mistake to backtrack.

The Facebook echo chamber

I've found a lot of the memes (at least I think that's what they are; I slept through that part of my millennial exam) and anti-Tory sarcasm on Facebook pretty disrespectful of the electorate, presuming of course that we don't face a Labour landslide. I appreciate that a lot of this is simply humour and that can be a good way to handle grief and that's fine, but there's a potentially dangerous message if taken too seriously that the Tories are some sort of evil overlords who can't be reasoned with and have an unfair advantage. Are the suggestions that Tories should "remember to vote on Friday" (and I've seen several of these) saying that we must subvert democracy as the only way Labour can win is if they start cheating?

What the best result looks like to me

While I'd like to see a strong Tory lead for the sake of Brexit, a narrow majority and strong opposition would be preferable on pretty much all other grounds. The recent improvement in Labour's campaign is therefore welcome and long may they continue to up their game.

How to vote

Whichever way you vote, be sure you'd defend it if you got what you asked for. No party is perfect, so if you could fast forward and see that they did all the things they might that you disagree with or they failed to deliver what you were concerned they might, would you still consider your decision the right one on balance given the information you had now? It's all relative. You may be uncomfortable with all choices and feel like you're choosing the least bad option. Consider that motivation to try to improve the party you end up choosing, or get involved in politics, or mitigate the downsides somehow. In whatever way makes sense to you take responsibility for your choice (and not voting is a choice, so take responsibility for that too).

And if you vote tactically, don't complain that you're not being listened to when you're not saying what you actually want.

A sense of perspective

Whichever side of the political fence you're on and whatever result you wake up to on Friday morning remember we have it pretty good in the UK by world standards and no result will take away all the opportunities to make things better.