The Devil or the Deep Blue Sea?

It's always an interesting week in politics, especially so when our hard-done by Lords and Masters (that's the MPs we're talking about) award themselves a massive pay rise, at the precise time when the entire public sector is being told there won't be any pay rises at all, millions face seeing their pensions devalued or removed and the opposition-bashing enters a more virulent phase.

It's currently fashionable to denigrate the Labour Party for its 'achievements', and - let's face it - by not reversing the Tories' initiatives in Education, Health and Welfare, they deserve criticism.  But before we all assume that it's time for a change (as we do, from time to time) it's worth pondering if we'd be any better off under the Tories.

This is, after all,  a party, one of whose biggest supporters is that bastion of democracy, Robert Mugabe, a party whom the Electoral Commission - no less - accused of interfering with the inquiry into Lord Ashchroft's  dodgy donations and a party led by a man who - it was revealed today - intends to spend some of his time raising money for the US Republican party, by hosting paid-for 'meets' with its biggest donors.

That last one is interesting, because it reveals that we'll almost certainly have even closer ties with the US under a Cameron-led government and it's also worth noting that the single biggest difference between the Labour and Tory parties in government over the past 20 years has been the distribution of wealth.  The Tories consider tax avoidance for the wealthy to be acceptable and see off-shore residence coupled with donations to their party as being desirable in the extreme.

But - in the last resort - you have to follow your conscience at the polls and ask yourself what sort of government do we really want?  The answer just might be to reform the voting system, as has been said on this blog many times before.