How to make your vote count?

HOW To Make Your Vote Count?

Echo letters (6th Nov) has comment from Mike Jones reasonably suggesting that the electorate examine the political parties stated policy priorities before deciding how to cast their vote.

Most importantly though, he omits to counsel that the electorate would be wise to consider whether their chosen political party, if elected, would truly attempt to honour any of those policy priorities.

Additionally the electorate would be wise to consider the honesty and principles of their preferred party and indeed the local candidate representing it. Brexit offers the clearest insight – a single issue, no complicating factors, consistent universal support from the national political parties (to hold the 2016 referendum, to implement its result, to trigger the Article 50 exit process and to reaffirm support in their manifestos for the 2017 General Election).

We are still EU members and trapped in yet another shameful extension. Labour and the Liberal Democrat parties did not honour their promises, used archaic parliamentary procedures, and drip fed policy amendments which essentially made exit impossible.

They employed tactics designed solely to frustrate and block Brexit. Not an honest position consistent with a declared policy of supporting Brexit. The Labour policy of ‘all options remain open’ has shifted to ‘we will renegotiate an exit deal but will not implement it, rather we will turn to another referendum and campaign for Remain’.

Lib Dems were so taken with the 2016 referendum that they moved to supporting a second referendum before now deciding to reject the 2016 referendum and unilaterally adopt Remain. They have shown no respect for the democratic decision they had sought.

These political parties created an impasse to which they offer no solution and twice refused to resolve it by facing the electorate in an election. Little evidence of any principled stand.

Mike Jones is correct that this has been detrimental to the governance of our domestic social and economic fabric and has been caused solely by those political parties in pursuit of their own political ideologies, all at the population’s expense.

We need to elect MPs with a government that will honestly and demonstrably support democracy, keep promises, deliver on our exit of the EU, construct the future relationship we will have with the world (including the EU) and manage the UK social and economic environment for the benefit of its population.

Arthur Shaw Loughborough