Local elections: for the first time ever, I don't think I can vote for anyone

[PoliticallyHomeless]

I am in an area (London) where the local elections are coming up in May. I have always been a big proponent of using your vote because
a) It's a hard-fought for right that we shouldn't take for granted
b) I always think that if you don't vote, you don't really have the right to bitch about the result, and the way things are.

Because of FPTP, I have on numerous occasions held my nose, and voted for the least bad option. Now however, I am at a point where I genuinely don't see who I can vote for. Self-Id is not the only issue on which I vote, but women's rights is a deal-breaker.

So, the options:

1. Conservative. I met my (Conservative) local MP the other week, to discuss Self-Id. It was actually quite a good discussion; he is clearly a bit TERFy on the quiet, and we were broadly in agreement on the issue. However he made it plain that for now he was going to sit back and let Labour have this fight in public. Also he is an arch Brexiteer (I am a platinum card carrying Remainer) and has a pretty dodgy voting record.

2. Labour. Great choice. Except for the Brexit problem. And the Women's problem. And the Anti-semitism problem.

3. Lib Dems. I was a member but quit due to their unquestioning acceptance of the "trans women are women" mantra, and the pretty vile things their affiliated accounts have posted.

4. WEP and Greens. They have brought in the TERF Finder General, so that's out.

5. Communists. The Morning Star actually had some fairly gender critical pieces, so that looked promising. Unfortunately their Brexit line is lemming-tastic. Full speed ahead over the cliff, so we can bring in a Marxist/Leninist state.

So... it really goes against the grain for me not to vote, but this a real quandary.

WWYD?

Nothing would surprise me like that.

The LDs ran a leaflet one year that was a pack of lies and really scaremongering. Dh ran the local office to complain and was told, he was part of an orchestrated campaign that had been complaining about the same thing all day and wasting their time on the phones.

I had intended to vote for them until they refused to accept responsibility and had piss poor attitude to the complaint.

They lost. And not by much.

I feel exactly the same. I cannot vote Tory - not under any circumstances.
I want to vote LibDem or Labour but would go Green if needed. However, they've all gone mad bending over backwards trying to show how inclusive and accepting they are, without stopping to question what will happen to women in the process. I just want to see a sign from one of them that they are willing to discuss the issues.

The lib dems entertain me. I wonder if they know that in 2005 the activists for nick Clegg were knocking on the doors of pensioners in Sheffield hallam and capitalising on the latent homophobia of the elderly by telling them (falsely) that the tory candidate was a woolly woofter?

It was a long time ago in a constituency far from mine but I still remember the disgraceful behaviour of the Lib Dems in Bermondsey.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bermondsey-by-election-1983-homophobia-hatred-smears-and-xenophobia-8508258.html

I'm thinking of writing this

Why base your vote on what your MP thinks? MPs have very little influence on what local councils do. Local elections are about voting for local issues, not national ones.

Try and put aside what parties are doing nationally and find out what your local options stand for and what they say they'll do if they get in.

Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I'm in this position too. I live in a London borough where the Labour vote could be weighed rather than counted - in recent years, anyway. The demographics of our area are changing rapidly but it hasn't affected election results much yet. Labour has a stranglehold on the local council and mayoralty, which I think is a great pity, as I believe good opposition makes for better debate and would result in higher quality council decisions. (I am an optimist. )

In the past wards in our area have briefly gone over to Green or LibDem, but have then gone back to Labour at the next election. There are one or two Tory councillors in this borough, but not in our part. Independents rarely make much headway either.

The list of candidates will be published next week. What I'm hoping to see is a principled local person with a bee in her/his bonnet about some worthy issue and no red flags about having some other weird views. If such a person appears, they will get my vote. I can't vote for a single mainstream party at present.

I'm really worried about how many people on here are talking about not voting over self-id.

There is a massive crisis in local government funding and we really need strong councillors who will argue with central government about it.

Here in Northamptonshire we might lose ALL of our refuges in just a couple of months time. We desperately need feminists that care about cuts to services to be voting.

In days of yore most council services were funded by local taxes, i.e. rates. That hasn't been the case for decades. Nowadays local services are mostly funded from central government. Councillors can make a lot of noise and so can local residents, but unless the PM and cabinet believe they will lose votes on it at the next General Election in vulnerable seats they can ignore local council issues.

I agree. Losing a lot of local seats over cuts will make it a much bigger issue than it is now.

Sadly at the moment central government thinks it can push the blame on local councils and remain untouched.

The plan is that councils will be completely self-funding in the next few years by the way, this is a huge disadvantage to areas with low rates of tax money coming in. Ie, poor and rural. Disadvantaged women in these areas are going to be particularly screwed.

We have, I think, only one candidate standing in my ward who actually lives in the ward. I'll check him out for his views on women's spaces. Labour, as it happens.

The rules for locals are that you have to live in the local authority area but you don't actually need to live in the ward. I was going to stand for the ward next door as I'm only really about two streets away and I actually have more to do with that ward as it contains our little town centre. I would seriously encourage anyone with ten local friends /neighbours to consider standing at least as a paper candidate.

@PoliticallyHomeless I was all set to vote LibDem as they have been really great locally, but then the whole self id/Twitter thing kicked off. I might email them to say as much, as women's rights are more fundamental to me than the local issues (which are pretty game changing for my town)

My Conservative MP is anti-self ID/GRA reforms, but his same-party councillors have been disastrous locally (even though I can't see them doing anything other than coming 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in a 3 horse race round here).

Labour is just a no-go for me entirely. I emailed the candidate with a perfectly civil and polite request for comment on the self id thing and she didn't even bother replying. So fuck her.

The last indie we had (that I voted for!) turned out to be a Cons puppet. Other than that they are usually racist parties under a Patriotism banner. They can get to fuck too.

In my ward I only have Cons councillors, not sure what other parties are running yet.

It’s worth remembering that in local elections you often have more than one vote, if your ward has more than one councillor. So you can vote for more than one party, vote for individuals based on their personal platforms and even ‘cancel out’ each party against each other in terms of overall majority on the council.

I know WEP aren’t popular around these parts - all I can say is I’m a gender critical member and working on it! WEP are standing around 25 (or perhaps 35, can’t remember) candidates, so if you have one, as a feminist, please consider voting for her. I’ve been out canvassing these past few weeks on a platform of fighting cuts to local services that disproportionately affect women, such as refuges and social care, and wanting a strong feminist voice on the council to hold the main parties to account and push for consideration of women’s interests and needs in decision making in general. The addition of dedicated feminist voices to local councils can only be a good thing, surely. Self-ID is one issue - a fundamental one for many of us, yes - but spoiling ballots at local council elections will not have any impact on it, I don’t think. Definitely challenge any canvassers though. Debate is always a good thing.