Voting Dilemmas

There’s a European Parliament election on Thursday. I’ve been trying to work out who to vote for.

That’s not normally a problem for me. I’m a natural Labour voter and have been for most of my life. Voting for any other party feels strange. But I’m so disillusioned with the government right now that it would seem even stranger to support them. So I’ve been looking elsewhere.

And there’s plenty to choose from. There are nineteen parties and independents standing in the London constituency. The voting form is huge.

There are some obvious candidates to eliminate. I’ll never vote Tory, UKIP, BNP, English Democrat, Christian Alliance or NO2EU. I might consider voting for a socialist party, but there are two of them, seemingly determined to split the socialist vote and ruin any chance that a united party might have of winning a seat. Then there are a few independents and smaller parties that no-one’s ever heard of and who stand no chance of winning. Not going to vote for any of them.

I was left with two alternatives – the Lib Dems and the Green Party. I’ve dabbled with both of these parties before. I was a member of the Green Party briefly twenty or so years ago and I voted Lib Dem in the last General Election. They both have polices that I agree with and policies that I don’t agree with. I couldn’t really see much to choose between them.

Then I saw this report about the Green Party’s health policies. I knew that the Greens had some Luddite tendencies, but this goes way beyond anything that I could possibly support. How can I possibly vote for a party that says:

complementary and alternative medicine, and community and social interventions will be used where appropriate

Or

Patient empowerment would eventually encompass choice of treatment backed by NHS funding for patients’ preferred treatment whether it be within the conventional framework of treating an illness and/or utilising alternative therapies.

Or

We will encourage the development of a wider and more relevant range of research techniques, including methods appropriate to the assessment of complementary therapies.

I’m not really clear why the current research techniques aren’t “appropriate to the assessment of complementary therapies”. Perhaps it’s because they consistantly demostrate that the vast majority of complementary therapies are pretty much useless.

The article also points out that elsewhere the Greens have stated:

We would oppose attempts to regulate complementary medicine, except by licensing and review boards made up of representatives of their respective alternative health care fields.

That would appear to have made my mind up for me. There’s no way I could ever vote for anyone who supports the promotion of “alternative” medicine. I won’t be voting Green.

So, unless the Labour Party does something spectacular to call me back to the fold before I fill in my voting papers this evening, it looks like I’ll be voting Lib Dem.