Taking dictation

My vote in a general election has never counted for anything (though if today's AV proposals being floated in the press come to pass that may change) so this can all be treated as entirely hypothetical - but if my vote did count this weekend's rumpus over conscience might cause me to rethink how I vote.

In a party ridden Parliamentary democracy I have always assumed that the dominant issue in how I vote is which party I think would make the less bad government. I can't claim that is always how I vote as last time I discovered in the polling booth (one consequence in living in a one-party fiefdom is you don't get much election literature as all the parties concentrate on those voters lucky enough to live in marginals) that one of the candidates was someone I loathed at university so I had to rethink with pencil in hand... But generally I pay little attention to the personal views and still less to the religious affiliations of the candidates. And as a general thesis I want MPs who who aren't just grade A lobby fodder -- and indeed when I was out of government I was part of a Hansard Society commission that looked at ways of strengthening the capacity of MPs to hold the executive to account.

But the recent furore over embryo research causes me to rethink. If there are some MPs who on some issues simply take dictation from their church then I think I need to know that they are going to do that before I vote - or don't - for them. I don't mind voting for an MP who rebels over Post Office or local A and E closures (though would regard them as pretty hypocritical if they don't have a view on how to finance that) or maybe even on Europe if they came clean on that in advance - but those are issues where there is a party line to vote for. On "ethical" issues where there is a free vote there is no party line for me to choose - and therefore I am lumbered with being represented by the personal views of my MP however alien they are to me -- and that is even more difficult to accept if those views are not susceptible to any sort of logical reasoning - and ones informed by deeply and genuinely held religious faith are hardly likely to be.

But at the same time, I think we have benefited from depoliticising moral issues and avoiding the so-called culture wars and values voting that has poisoned US politics for so long. And making some issues subject to free votes has been part of that. It may be that this is an area where we have to accept that our elected representatives are not really fit for purpose and opt instead for farming out the issue to a more technocratic organisation informed by a more genuinely representative citizen's jury and some proper deliberation.

Until then, I will just have to pay a bit more attention to whom I am voting for - well I would if it was likely to make one jot of difference.