If there was a general election this week, how would you vote?

[TheDullWitch]

OK, quick poll inspired by David Willetts thread. Answer...

1. How you would vote
2. Who you usually vote for
3. Main issue/personality/event which has made your decision.

1. conservative

1. oh I've voted everything in the past. Labour, Lib dem, green in local elections, UKIP... I'm usually an oh-sod-it voter. On a truly conviction vote, I'd vote libertarian if a candidate was available.

1. why? Lots of the same reasons the conservative types have said upthread, but chiefly the statism of NuLabour. Smaller government would be very much more consonant with my beliefs about family, personal and social responsibility, economics, privacy, freedom, EU federalism etc etc. Besides, I just looked at some of DCs conference speech and he so charmingly has that minor-public-school-chaplain manner which I just can't resist

Under a conservative government we'd get a referendum on Lisbon. That's a big deal for me. Not giving us the promised referendum was a major betrayal by the labour lot.

Oh, and that whole spend through the boom years - what the hell was that all about? Old Mother Hubbard has nothing on Brown.

1.tory
2.tory
i just love David Cameron and Boris Johnson

1. Green
2. Labour
3. It's the environment, stupid.

I'm an ABC voter.

Anything But Conservative.

I'm old enough to have been scarred by the Thatcher years. Put me off Tories for life.

monster raving loony (if there's a candidate)

monster raving loony

Who would you trust?

1.Lib Dem (only I wish Vince Cable were in charge rather than Cleggy)
2.Labour (all my life up to now but can't stomach it any more)
3.can't stand the way we suck up to the damn Americans, erosion of civil liberties, proliferation of CCTV, sucking up to big business, you name it.

1. SNP
2. SNP
3. Have always believed that Scotland should take it's place as a normal country taking on responsibility for it's own affairs.

If I lived in England, I don't know who I would vote for - Labour = weapons of mass distruction, illegal war, ID cards etc etc. Tories - Cameron lauded Maggie in his conference speech - say no more! Lib Dems - all things to all people depending on where they're standing. Would probably vote Green.

"damn Americans"

F off.

1. Conservative
2. Conservative
3. Always voted Conservative

1)Labour altho I don't think either of the three would be a disaster.
2)Labour
3)I like Mr Cameron very much. I think he has given the Tories a real make over and that he could have comfortably been in the Labour party - remember his ambiguous youth and the KGB trying to recruit him in Russia etc :-) . My friends tell me that as a high earner etc I should be voting Tory. But the thing is I vote with my ideals NOT simply how much I personally stand to benefit. Labour to me stands for loooking after the more vulnerable in society.

Tells me a lot about Conservatives that Mr Cameron has had to force women and minorities on to them.

Interesting that so many people have said that they "couldn't bring themselves to vote.... Labour/Tory/whatever."
So, regardless of the circumstances the country is in, or what a party's pledges are, or track record has been, they're just going to tick the box they always have done "just because?"

Although I do think 3 terms is too long for any party. The pendulum needs to swing back a bit.

1. Labour, with a heavy heart
2. Labour
3. Cameron is a nice frontman for some very nasty people who can't wait to get their hands on power so they can start plundering the public purse and picking on groups they don't like, i.e. most of the electorate. Look at the posts on some of the right-wing websites if you don't believe me. How they are crowing!

Plundering the public purse? How is the State being 50 billion pounds in debt not plundering the public purse? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it certainly seems to me that the current lot have not been, what's the cliche?, entirely prudent with our money.

Most govts plunder the public purse. The key question for me is what they do with the proceeds. Tories give them to their mates in the City and large corporations in subsidies and selective tax breaks. The belief in the free market is skin-deep - witness the current crisis. Privatise the profits, socialise the risks is the name of the game - and always has been.

Cameron will become PM at this or the next election. He is a very decent toff. The kind of guy that you could get on with. Osbourne is probably okay as well.

Even under Labour we have the freedom to make a buck but I want to vote for a Govt that intervenes to ensure fairness. For example, I feel that Labour has taken child poverty in UK and overseas seriously. I like that balance; I don't want a completely free market per the Tories- altho' we are now not sure where they stand on this.

"decent toff" is an oxymoron.

Nightbynight-
Must be me but I liked Dougie Herd as well - another decent toff - patriarchal Tory. One of the reasons that I they won't get my vote though is they don't reflect wider society and I can't trust them to look after the interest of the poor. They are too obsessed with lower the tax bill for the middle classes. I DON'T enjoy paying taxes but I think that there is a balance. Britain is a persistently class immobile society and I don't think that it is really one of their central objectives to fix socitey. This is a task that Labour struggles with as well but the ideal is there (withness some progress on child poverty); and I think voting should NOT be a purely self interested exercise.

terrible spelling above sorry

toughdaddy - yes I agree with all that you say, and thats why I dont think they are decent, because they perpetuate Britain as it is.

1. SNP
2. Scottish Socialist
3. Belief that we now have a decent leader in Alex Salmond and that we shall have independence soon.

I agree with everything Toughdaddy says too. There were some vg individual Ministers in last Tory administration (Hurd, K Clarke, G Shepherd). But the party represents sectional interests (Surrey, bankers) rather than the country as a whole. If you're a banker from Godalming, I understand why you might vote for them. But don't represent it as anything other than self-interest.

Another agreement with ToughDaddy too here.