Vote for a party’s policies and actions, not its name or history | Letters

Readers respond to Polly Hudson’s article about feeling that she has no choice but to vote LabourPolly Hudson (Some people have a choice about whether or not to vote Labour. I wish I did too, 5 October) seems to be confusing her father’s devotion to his political and ethical principles with devotion to a party. He sounds like a dedicated and hard-working MP who sacrificed a lot for his principles and to serve his country and community.But it’s only in dictatorships that devotion to “the party” starts to supersede commitment to moral and ethical principles. As citizens of a democratic country, it is imperative that we vote according to our principles and our ideas of what we want this country to be. Doing so must be based on a party’s policies and actions, not its name or history. Granted, this is complicated by our voting system, which creates the sense that we must at times pick “the best of a bad bunch” as the only option of picking a winner. Continue reading...

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