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April 14, 2005
The British Elections
Ever wonder where you fit into the British political spectrum? Well, wonder no more. Take the test (as I did):
Who should I vote for?
Labour -4  | |
 Conservative 39 | |
| Liberal Democrat -33 | |
| UK Independence Party 38 | |
| Green 2 |
You should vote: Conservative
The Conservative Party is strongly against joining the Euro and against greater use of taxation to fund public services. The party broadly supported the Iraq war and backs greater policing and ID cards. The Tories are against increasing the minimum wage above the rate of inflation, and have committed to abolishing university tuition fees. They support 'virtual vouchers' for private education.
Take the test at Who Should You Vote For
As you can see, it is Conservative or UKIP for me. (I'm stunned that I came in even slightly positive on the Green Party, given my usual instinctive reaction to Europe's Greens.)
Clearly there are alot of problems with this. I think it is designed as a clever sell for the Liberal Democrats. Allot of the questions seem to fit their agenda by construction. The questions are also restrictive. For instance, I am opposed to the idea of college grants for the poor. I am not opposed to the idea of subsidized public loans to poor students (subsidized in the sense that there is a missing market because private actors cannot rationally extend credit to these young people at any reasonable interest rate). I think there should be limits on immigration-but within that is allot of room for differences on the issue of immigration. Nonetheless, it was fun.
Update:
My wife and I discussed this and she explained that I am against fox hunting. (All kidding aside, she has a point. My original reasoning was that I am always a bit uncomfortable with snotty urbanites passing moral judgements on rural lifestyles. On the other hand, I own two English bulldogs, and she rightly asked if I would be willing to go back to the days of bull-baiting.) I re-took the test and perhaps made other slight adjustments. The new results illustrate, I think, the sensitivity of the results of this little test to small adjustments:
Who should I vote for?
| Labour 12 | |
| Conservative 33 | |
| Liberal Democrat -33 | |
| UK Independence Party 32 | |
| Green -6 |
You should vote: Conservative
The Conservative Party is strongly against joining the Euro and against greater use of taxation to fund public services. The party broadly supported the Iraq war and backs greater policing and ID cards. The Tories are against increasing the minimum wage above the rate of inflation, and have committed to abolishing university tuition fees. They support 'virtual vouchers' for private education.
Take the test at Who Should You Vote For
Posted by dag at April 14, 2005 11:47 AM
Comments
Here are my results.
Your actual outcome:
Labour 20
Conservative 19
Liberal Democrat -27
UK Independence Party 25
Green 0
You should vote: UK Independence Party
UKIP's primary focus is on Europe, where the party is strongly against joining both the EU constitution and the Euro. UKIP is also firmly in favour of limiting immigration. The party does not take a clear line on some other policy issues, but supports scrapping university tuition fees; it is strongly against income tax rises and favour reducing fuel duty.
Posted by: The Wife at April 14, 2005 06:04 PM