Why I Will Never Vote Conservative

Unfortunately the General Election has coincided with a massive influx of work, so I haven't had the time to knock out any of the political blog posts that have been bursting to get out. However, with only a few days to go, I felt I should really at least say why I would never ever vote Conservative.

The Conservative Party is fundamentally a party for the justification of society's inequalities.

They regularly repeat the myth that people are a success through their own hard work, whilst those that are unsuccessful or unemployed have no one to blame but themselves. Such a myth is very appealing to voters. Not only to the rich who want to feel good about society's inequalities, but also to those who feel they deserve more. After all, "if it wasn't for the dole scroungers we'd all be better off". The truth, however, is that success has very little to do with some innate hard work ethic, and far more to do with sheer blind luck.

It's easy for David Cameron to stand at the Prime Ministerial Debate and tell us that unemployed people, if offered a job, should be forced to take it. Easy because at no point in David Cameron's life was he ever likely to be forced to take a minimum wage job working in a factory with no prospects. Easy because David Cameron was never brought up in an environment where there were no prospects and no opportunities, not only for the individual but for the whole family, street, area.

It is, of course, too easy to pick on David Cameron; his life has been one long list of privilege unknown to the average man in the street. Surely the rest of us got where we are today through our own hard work? Personally, I think you'd have to be pretty arrogant to think so; failing to recognise the role of the people who you've met along the way.

I always think that if anyone has the right to be arrogant, I do. Brought up on an estate in a single-parent family, kicked out of home at 17, before spending years on the dole and working in food processing factories. Then, 10 years ago, I decided to sort my life out: an evening class at the end of a 12-hour shift in chicken factory, a degree, a PhD, and at the end I get more for a day's work than my mother ever has ever earned in a week. On one level the story I've just told is complete: there was no hidden pot of cash or opportunities that aren't available to everyone in this country. On the other hand, the story misses a lot. It misses the the important details that are so often missed when we promote ourselves as deserving what we've gotten. It ignores the middle-class aspirational values I had drummed into me as a child, it forgets the person who persuaded me not to drop out of my undergraduate degree, and that part of the reason I ever got to do a PhD was my undergrad supervisor wrote my research up as a journal article. Whilst my life has been far less privileged than most, I've also had my share of luck on the way.

I don't deny we need to deal with problems such as unemployment, anti-social behaviour, and crime. But if you start the conversation from the point of view that you deserve what you have, and others don't, then you're a fool and you'll probably vote Conservative. Personally, I never will.