I must say, one of the benefits of being away and busy is that of missing the columns of certain well-known Guardian columnists. But with a bit of time on my hands while waiting to meet someone, I take a look at George Monbiot and I come upon this passage:
If... you were to vote Green, Plaid Cymru, Respect or Scottish Socialist, you would send an unequivocal signal about the kind of politics you are rejecting and the kind of politics you are embracing. The reason is that these parties, as far as Westminster is concerned, inhabit the political margins. It is precisely because none has the slightest chance of running the country that a vote for them is interpreted as a clear expression of intent: your choice must be ideological, rather than tactical. Paradoxically, a vote for a minor party can thus be far more powerful than a vote for a party with an eye on government. All four of them are solidly to the left of Labour. They have been consistently anti-war, anti-privatisation, pro-distribution and pro-environment. No one who has read their manifestos can doubt that a vote for one of them is a vote against the current deference to wealth and rank.Harry has already blogged this - and he makes an important point about it - but something else struck me. It was the combination of Respect, as one of the four supposedly good voting options, and its lack of 'deference' for wealth and rank. And who is Respect's best known politician? And before whom did he perform an actual public act of deference? But this doesn't trouble our George, it seems, no more than it troubled the other one whose act of deference it was. No, 'the kind of politics you are embracing' can make allowances for a revolting thing like that, before one of the world's most odious political figures.