Look at that picture, why is this the official press shot for the final leaders’ debate instead of a picture of the three of them looking stern and debatey? Perhaps it’s just because of the irreverence with which British people treat their politicians. I don’t think they release press shots like this in China. Brown and Clegg look like they’re doing a little dance, or perhaps the floor is really hot, while Cameron is staring into space, perhaps day-dreaming about his Eton days, or how many butlers he’s going to have when (if) he moves into 10 Downing Street.

I never thought I’d really care about politics, being quite generally apathetic about a lot of things, and until recently, I never really knew anything about the different parties or what they stood for. I’ll tell you what made me start caring about politics though: Nick Griffin. When he was on Question Time, I watched the programme for the first time, and it inspired me. I sat there, and I watched his fat, lop-sided toad face articulate his racist ideologies, his holocaust denial, I listened to the audience booing him, and I realised at that moment that, as a person eligible to vote, I had to do everything in my power to make sure somone like that never got into any position of power.

Since then I’ve watched Question Time every week, and as the weeks went by, I started to notice something: the people on the show I most agreed with, usually the most vibrant, healthy looking people, compared to the tired, stressed Labour and Conservative politicians, always had a Liberal Democrat title appear under their face. When the politicians from the other parties were just spouting rhetoric and spin, the Lib Dem people always said something sensible, and then were promptly ignored. They were like Cassandra from Greek myth; able to predict the future, but with no one to hear their prophesies. So I became kindly disposed towards them, and I want to suggest why you should too.

But, if you’re already interested in policy, arguably the most important aspect of politics, then you probably already know from the leaders’ debates, manifestos, papers, etc., what the parties’ main proposals are. And if you don’t know about those already, then I’m sure you can find them out from more reliable sources than me. So let’s put aside all the political ideologies for a moment as I argue why I think everyone should vote Lib Dem based just on the names of the parties.

Let’s start with Labour. ‘Labour’. Who likes ‘labour’? Labour means doing hard work. It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘working hard’, which is a good, positive thing, it means doing hard work, as in ‘manual labour‘. No one does that for fun, people only do it if they have to. No one wakes up on a Sunday and thinks “you know what I’ll do today? I’ll do some labour, yeah!” And then it gets worse. You have ‘labour’ as in ‘child labour‘, ‘slave labour‘, ‘going into labour‘. Those aren’t good things, no one wants those things.

Next you have the Conservative party. Ain’t no party like a Conservative party, because if you went to a conservative party, how much fun would you have? Not much. “How was that conservative party?” “Not very good; they were conservative with the snacks and booze.” Being conservative is like not sharing, not sharing power, not sharing money, holding back, keeping for oneself, being guarded. A conservative person wouldn’t want you getting close to them, finding stuff out about them. But surely, you might say, being conservative can be a good thing, like conservatories, fruit conserves and conserving energy. Conservatories I’ll give you can be quite a good thing, though they’re often either much too cold or much too hot. Fruit conserve too is nice on toast, but no one calls it that any more. I mean, who does buy fruit conserves nowadays? People buy jam and marmalade. It’s basically the same thing. We can live without fruit conserves. Conserving energy on the other hand, no bones to pick with that. Same with conserving the environment, the natural world, wildlife conservation parks, they’re all excellent things. Ironic then that the British Conservative party contains some of the most vocal climate change deniers in the country. Sorry, I said I wouldn’t get into ideology (I just like the Conservatives least by a long way of the three main parties).

Onto Liberal Democrats. How can you not love that name? Let’s start with the first part. Liberal. Giving freely, in abundance. You like Radox bath products? We used to get Radox bath salts sometimes. They smell so nice. And you know what it used to say on the back of the box? “pour liberally into your bath”. Not “pour conservatively”, not “pour laboriously”: “pour liberally”. “How was that liberal (democrat) party?” “It was great, there was a liberal amount of booze and snacks, everyone had a good time.” Remember ‘slave labour‘? When William Wilberforce lead the movement to abolish English slavery, he liberated the slaves. You can’t argue with that. And liberal comes from the same root that provides liberty, and who doesn’t like having their Liberty, the freedom to live their lives as they want. And that’s just the first half of the name.

The second half gets better: ‘Democrat’. A ‘democrat’ is someone who believes in ‘democracy’. Only tyrants, xenophobes and those with deep-seated prejucidices don’t believe in Democracy. North Korea doesn’t have a democratic system. You want to live in North Korea? And in Iraq, Afghanistan, in many places across the world, people are prepared to die for democracy, for the right to vote. It’s more than just an idea, a cute little privelege: it’s the right to have your voice heard. Why would you not want that?

So, while the other two parties chose a single undesirable word for their names, the Liberal Democrats’ name is composed of two very good words. And if that on it’s own is not a good enough reason to vote for them on Thursday, perhaps you should go check out their policies or something.

Tags: Conservative, David Cameron, election 2010, everyone else is talking about it, Gordon Brown, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, politics, words

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