I've voted in every election since I was 18 years old, and I've never voted for the winning side!
My first few times I voted for a local M.P in Northern Ireland. I voted for a party called the Alliance party that was trying to be non-partisan. However the only parties that ever get in in that little backwater are either rabid right-wing religious protestant parties or catholic parties that at the extreme end, supported the IRA's murder campaign. Even today these two extremes 'rule' (incompetently I might add) the local Northern Ireland assembly, the moderates have never got through the door.
Anyway since moving to the UK mainland I've only voted for smaller parties...probably the last few times it's been for the Green Party. When you talk to people on the street you see that the media has everyone programmed like androids, "I'll never vote labour they are incompetent with the economy & taxes will go up"...or "I'll never vote Conservative, those bunch of posh tw*ts will screw over the poor & make their banker friends even richer."
My theory is that any country that has a two-party system, you know two big parties which dominate the parliament & swap power with each other over the decades, has been stitched-up, bought-out, corrupted. You can observe it clearly here in the UK, a lot of shouting and posturing in parliament, a media that loves reporting on the latest things said.... but it's a facade that hides what's really going on inside - Big-business lobbyists drawing up & shaping legislation to benefit their firms. Then if the politicians have followed the directions of the money men, the true rulers, they will be rewarded. We have seen this phenomena recently with Barak Obama earning $600K for one speech. A few months ago, George Osborne (the ex Chancellor of the exchequer in the UK) received the same lavish payments from the same Wall Street firms. We can consider these payments as bribes for helping those firms out during their time in government. Obviously they can't just GIVE them millions of dollars, that's too obvious. Instead they get 'paid' some ridiculous sum of money to talk for an hour. What a corrupt system.
Politics in the UK is homogeneous, unlike other countries we have 'first past the post' voting for each M.P. That means that smaller parties, even though they might represent 20% of the electorate, get 0 M.Ps (because they only got 20% in each area that was electing a member of parliament). So we get a big room full of boring grey people in boring grey suits shouting at each other. I'm sure the 'enemies' that pretend to represent views from opposing ends of a spectrum have friendly meals & drinkies together in the many (subsidised) bars & restaurants inside the parliament building.
So how will I be voting & why?
I've decided to abstain this time & possibly from now on. I feel even voting for a doomed smaller party gives some sort of legitimacy to the whole sordid thing. So, I'm out. I refuse to see them as legitimate, or as my representatives.
Looks like the Tories for at the moment.