Reasons to vote in the general election

Just like last time, I've been finding plenty of reasons for the electorate to vote for the various parties in the general election. Most of them are admittedly whimsical at best - it shouldn't be too hard for you to identify the very small number of reasons I've found that I think might just be good ones.

Labour

You don't know if we should leave or remain and think we need at least another year to figure it all out

You want to be able to play Fortnite all day on free broadband on your day off in a 4 day week 

You long for the good old days of British Telecom and British Rail. You agree they were completely crap but it's much better to wait for months for a phone line than to have someone make a profit out of providing you with a generally good service.

You don't like rich people and think their taxes should go up so much that they all bugger off abroad. Sure we won't be able to afford as many doctors, nurses and teachers but it's better than having all those blood sucking rich dudes around. Isn't it?

You long for the good old days of secondary picketing and want to see the trade unions restored to their rightful position of being called in to No 10 for beer and sandwiches to fix the problems they have created in the first place

Spending that much money will inevitably create the crisis in capitalism that you crave. Not so much the velvet revolution, more the spendthrift revolution

You like paying for sex and want to see it decriminalised. (The Labour Party officially supports the blanket decriminalisation of the sex trade. It's not clear if they realise that means removing all laws against pimping and brothel-keeping and effectively means exploiters and human traffickers would go free. As Andrea Dworkin said, only when women's bodies are being sold for profit do leftists claim to cherish the free market).

You can't stand Trump or American imperialism and think we should quit NATO and forge a new alliance with Cuba, Venezuela and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

You think Britain should be much more outward looking and so we need a PM like Jeremy, whose main interest is in the international socialist cause not all this boring internal British stuff. Indeed you've always supported all revolutionary causes (IRA, Hamas and so on) and can't understand what the anti-semitism fuss is about. It's much more important to oppose Israel and Trump.

You think that, with so little on the nation's plate currently, Parliamentary time should be allocated to legislating about football club governance. (Shadow sports minister Rosena Allin-Khan says fans should be given a greater say in running clubs, including who the manager is and whether "safe" standing should be allowed. I imagine she doesn't know anyone who was at Hillsborough).

You don't believe what you read (that Johnson has had the most diverse cabinet ever) and think there should be more women and black people in the cabinet. After all, Diane Abbott will really sort the Home Office out

You're fed up with there being so many elections and voting for a bunch of unreconstructed Marxists could well be a way of bringing that to an end.

(Trust me these are only a subset of the range of reasons for voting Labour)

Liberal Democrats

You like to think the referendum never happened. (But sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la la" every time Brexit is mentioned might work just as well for you....)

You want to see gender neutral uniforms in school and want to be able to put "X" against your child's gender on their passport

You like paying for sex and want to see it decriminalised. See Labour above. The LibDems also take the view that prostitution is a job like any other. The party's Wendy Chamberlain argued against criminalising punters saying that "sex work has been going on for thousands of years and sadly no policy will end it". Er, you could say the same about murder, Wendy....

You think we should invest in all our people, not just young people and certainly not just the top 50% who go to university. After all if it's elitist to preferentially treat the top 20% by sending them to grammar schools isn't it just as elitist to send the top 50% to uni and ignore most of the rest apart from some pathetic apprenticeship schemes?

Conservative

You just want to get Brexit DONE! (I've bad news for you: negotiating trade deals will be a pain and won't happen quickly, even if ditches are died in).

You enjoy having a PM who speaks quite well and has comic value even if he doesn't know what he's saying. After all isn't that better than having a PM who doesn't speak well, also doesn't know what he's saying and definitely isn't funny?

The Tories are the only party who have the faintest clue about business and the economy, even if Boris did say **** business and they don't actually have any relevant policies. After all, isn't it just best to end the Brexit uncertainty and then give business the confidence that they can plan because the government isn't actually going to do or change anything?

You are worried that there will be another financial crisis. Oops, too bad, all parties are promising to break what's left of the bank. But the starting point might not be quite as acute under the Tories.

You are an endangered or victimised species (i.e. an entrepreneur or a fairly high earner trapped in George Osborne's fiendishly complex black hole of the pension taper; maybe an NHS consultant, praised to the hilt for your work and taxed at marginal rates that can be above 100%*). Actually it's too bad, probably no-one is going to help you but it's just possible that, having created this ludicrous situation, the Tories might not make it worse. Which would probably be impossible anyway.

You think that fairly high earners, even NHS consultants, are as bad as the super rich and so like the Tories for hammering them with the brilliant pension taper.

Green

You had such fun on the XR demos, holding up people going to work and the odd blue light ambulance.

You think it's right on having two people as party leader simultaneously. If Boris had thought of that and shared the role with Gove, they wouldn't have had the problem with Channel 4. Stupid Tories! 

You are miserable, having given up all air travel, your fossil-fuelled car and gas boiler and are limiting your use of batteries because of all the rare and unrecyclable materials in them. After all, mustn't be hypocritical. But it would cheer you up no end if everyone else had to get on board and join you in the Middle Ages by 2025 at the latest.

You're so woke you never need to set an alarm clock.

SNP

You're fed up with being subsidised by the English and want indeyref2 to sort that out once and for all.

Indeed, given the choice, you'd rather be subsidised and bossed around by the Germans than the damned English.

Plaid Cymru

See SNP

Brexit

Just like UKIP last time, I can't even think of an amusing reason to vote Brexit. It doesn't make sense even as a tactical vote in this election. Campaign for Farage's Nobel Peace Prize instead.

* The pension allowance taper is perhaps the single daftest taxation idea implemented by government in my lifetime. I've read that, as gross salary increases from £118k to £180k take home pay only goes up by £3k (which seems incredible), with marginal tax rates exceeding 94%. Between £118,800 and £122,600 marginal tax rates are over 100%. The arrangements are so complex some finanicial advisers will not offer advice. The taper is why many NHS consultants have limited their hours of work to avoid falling into the trap and large numbers are planning to retire early. One consultant, appointed to lead a regional specialist service, got a £92,000 tax bill, was effectively forced to leave the pension scheme in his 40s and intends to leave the NHS. Anecdotally some have had to sell their house to pay a large unexpected tax bill. Johnson has said he'll fix it but it's still the example that most undermines my view that the Tories are generally competent. I know these are high earners but this is worse than "one for me 19 for you" as George Harrison sang about the taxman under Labour in the 1960s. And note it doesn't affect really high earners. And funnily enough folk like train drivers fall just under the £80k higher rate threshold - as do MPs come to that.