In Manchester, where I live, something curious is happening. My house is in a fairly prosperous, middle class area and many windows sport 'Vote Labour' posters. Meanwhile the windows of a nearby council estate are largely adorned by 'Vote Lib-Dem' posters (!) Manchester is largely a Labour city (the Tories are nowhere). Manchester City Council is completely dominated by Labour and I find them to be smug and autocratic. They appear to be mainly focussed on courting Big Business and property developers. On the other hand we have had a LibDem MP for the last 10 years and he has been very hard-working and active in the community. We did, until recently, have a handful of LibDem councillors and they too were very active and responsive to peoples' needs (didn't stop them from losing their seats though - just as our MP will probably lose his).

Recently, I came across a quote about Jeremy Clarkson (stay with me!). He was described as a "virtue signifier" i.e. it is now obligatory to condemn JC in any conversation in order to show how virtuous (and unlike JC) you are. I suddenly realised that all those 'Vote Labour' posters, in middle class Manchester windows, are virtue signifiers! The poster displayers fondly imagine that Labour stands for equality, social justice etc., etc. - which shows that the displayers are 'virtuous' - whilst wilfully blinding themselves to the fact that Labour is now a 'pale mauve', centre right, neo-liberal party.

I'm not a member of any political party, by the way. I hate the Tories as much as anyone. If I thought that I could get away with it, I would set fire to the Tory party. But if the Labour party was alight, I wouldn't piss on it to put it out!

In my opinion, all of the main parties have 19th century ideologies, now deeply corrupted by neo-liberalism. Note how, during this campaign, none of them have mentioned the state of the environment - the most overwhelming, urgent and desperate set of problems of modern times. We desperately need 21st century politicians who will put the environment at the forefront of everything!