It seems that my erstwhile MP is more famous since he stepped down than he ever was in action.  Unfortunately, his jumping ship to the LibDems doesn’t help me with my “Now who do I vote for?” dilemma.  If Mr Sedgmore was still standing in Hackney South and Shoreditch — for either party — I would happily vote for him.  As it is I have the choice between Meg Hillier for Labour and Gavin Baylis for the LibDems.

I emailed Meg Hillier via her website the other day, and yesterday she actually responded, I’m pleased to say.  You won’t be surprised to hear that I asked about her view on ID cards.  Her answer, unfortunately, was, “I’m toeing the party line.”

Not in so many words, of course; here’s what she actually wrote (in an attached MS Word document, rather than in the body of the email, for some weird reason):

This is now part of the Labour Party manifesto. I am a Labour candidate standing on a Labour Party manifesto. Had I drafted the manifesto it would have had a different focus on this issue.

Hmm.  So are you against it, or not?  She goes on to say:

There is a long way before current proposals become law, no doubt there will be an opportunity to influence change as the bill progresses through Parliament.

Fair point, but does that mean you’ll vote against it? And whether it does or not, can we afford to take the risk that such an attack on civil liberties could be passed in any form? To some extent I don’t fear ID cards and the database state under a Labour government — even New Labour — so much as I do under a possible future Tory government. Imagine for a moment if Britain had had such a setup during Thatcherism, when so many of us were campaigning against nuclear weapons or for the miners, and were generally actively against the government. Or how would MI5 have made use of tools like those, when they were undermining the Wilson and Callaghan governments?

Meg has more modern concerns, though:

I have been told that tackling identity theft and child protection would be better served with some form of ID card – I will be looking into this more.

I have been told that when we die we all go to a big palace in the clouds and have wings, but the baddies are still going to be able to forge or steal the cards.  In fact, I think it could make identity theft easier.  People — or at least, institutions — may come to have such faith in database-backed ID cards that the idea of one being in any way wrong will be quite literally unbelievable. The end result will be that, in order to steal someone’s identity, all you need to steal or fake is one card.  They introduce a single point of failure.

The next MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch concludes:

I have no problem with voluntary ID cards.

But it’s only short steps from “voluntary” to “voluntary but required if you want to use a bank account or leave the country” to “compulsory”, it seems to me.

I’m pleased to see that Gavin Baylis is a member of the London Cycling Campaign. Time for an email to him, I think. Followed in a week’s time by a cross in his box.

Politics not getting anybody interested, then? OK, we’ll try religion.

I was brought up a Catholic.  I grew out of it, of course; saw sense, kicked over the traces.  But even when I was a devout Catholic, I think I would have found it very strange, to the point of macabre, to queue for hours to see a recently-dead body; and then to take photographs of it.

Indeed, I’m fairly sure that the Catholicism I grew up with would have frowned on it.  That empty shell is not John Paul II, after all: he has gone on, you know?  Been “called home”, in the words of President Bush (pity it wasn’t him.  But I digress).

Not that I believe in any of that.  I strongly suspect that old Karol has discovered that in the afterlife there is nothing but a purple glow and a humming sound; and that even he isn’t there.  If I remember my Vonnegut aright.  So it goes.

When my Dad died I went to see his body.  At the undertaker’s; in private, with just the family there.  It seemed a normal, natural thing to do.  Sad, obviously, but a part of saying goodbye, of coming to terms with his death.  So I suppose the devout Catholics who are queueing for hours to see the Pope’s body are going through a similar thing; and since he was a public figure, it all happens under the camera’s glare.

But really: they didn’t know him.  He wasn’t family, or a close friend, however important he might be to their faith.  So I can’t help thinking it smacks of thanatophilia; almost idolatry; and I’m sure the church I grew up in wouldn’t have approved.

… but is that a side order of despair with that, sir?

Time to start blogging the election, then.  But what to say?  Normally I’d be exhorting you to vote Labour, like in 1997 and 2001; though those were before the days of blogs (for me, at least).  But this year.  This year it’s different.

I could of course warn of the danger of sleep-walking towards a Tory government, as Ken did.  And that would be true: there’s no doubt that the Tories would be much worse than Labour or the Lib Dems for the economy and public services.  Plus the idea of it is just repellent; especially for those of us who lived through the Thatcher years.  Who, like me, was politically naive (and fortunately too young to vote) in 1979, and thought something along the lines of, “let’s give them a chance to see how they do”.  And then watched as public services and manufacturing industry were systematically dismantled, as everything good at the heart of this country was attacked by the greedy, money-grubbing scumbags who wanted to turn us into a “share-owning democracy” by selling us the stuff we already owned.

So yes, I could warn about that.  About how Michael Howard was one of Thatcher’s henchmen, about how he presided over the “No repetitive beats” Criminal Justice Act which attempted to criminalise public partying.  About how Howard Flight’s secret revelations are probably understated, and that Tory sleaze didn’t go away after 1997, it just went underground.

But this is 2005, and we don’t have to try to depose a sleazy Tory government any more.  It’s much worse than that.  We have to try to depose a sleazy Labour government; and we have to do it without letting the Tories in.

There is an obvious answer, in theory, at least: we should vote for the Liberal Democrats.  And that wouldn’t be so bad.  I could do that (I might have to).  But the trouble is, most people, disillusioned as they are with the other two, won’t vote for the Lib Dems.  Many people seem to have this strange desire to vote for the winning party.  This is a curious attitude that I have never understood.  Obviously you  want your side to win.  You believe in their policies, or thnk that an individual is the best person to represent your constituency, so you want them to win.  That’s how a representative democracy works.

What I don’t understand is the attitude that seems to say, “I’m not going to vote for them, because they won’t win”.  Well of course they won’t, if nobody votes for them.  But you’re not trying to bet on winner, you’re trying to choose a representative.  It doesn’t matter (in one sense) if you lose; it matters that you vote for what’s right.

The government is crap.  New Labour is crap.  It’s not just Iraq and the whole US-poodle thing; I could see my way past that.  It’s much worse than that.  it’s ID cards.  It’s house arrest.  it’s an attack on civil liberties so extreme that even Thatcher wouldn’t have attempted it.

I live in a safe Labour seat.  My MP, Brian Sedgmore, kicked government arse in his speech on house arrest.  I could happily vote for him again.  Unfortunately, he’s standing down at the election.  I’ve just being doing some research on his replacement candidate, Meg Hilllier.  She is worryingly silent on ID cards.

I miss old — rather, proper — Labour; I miss having people you might actually want to vote for.  Hell, I even miss 1997-grade New Labour.  I almost miss having Thatcher in power.  At least then it was easy to know who to vote against.

But I wouldn’t want them back.  I’d spoil my ballot before I’d ever vote for those scumbags.  Unless — just maybe unless — they came out against ID Cards.  If they did, though, I wouldn’t trust them.

Never mind a Tory government: we’re sleep-walking towards hell in a handbasket.