I've Joined The Liberal Democrats

Following the snap election announcement, I've joined the Liberal Democrats as I believe they're our best chance of stopping Brexit.

Looking over their website, they say that they're against a hard Brexit, rather than simply against Brexit. But this is better than the Tories, and in my constituency of Bath the 2015 general election results were:

  1. Conservative 17,833
  2. Liberal Democrat 14,000
  3. Labour 6,216
  4. Green 5,634
  5. UKIP 2,922
  6. Independent 499
  7. English Democrat 63 

My MP, Ben Howlett (Conservative), voted with his party to trigger Article 50, but the Lib Dem position was to vote against Article 50. So I reasoned that the best hope to get a pro-EU MP for Bath is to do what I can to help the Lib Dems, so I've stumped up £70 and joined them.

People argue that the referendum result was the will of the people and parliament must comply with it. I feel that in this tussle between the referendum and parliament, ultimately parliament should decide. Referendums are never a good idea, and I was against a referendum right from the beginning.

If anyone's still reading, here's my main reason for wanting to be part of the EU. We've got to have some way of coexisting with other people, and democracy seems the least bad approach. Without the EU we'd have democracy up to the national level, but anarchy beyond that. As we know, in an anarchy, life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. Without an EU we've had two world wars; essentially European civil wars played out over the globe. On the other hand, with the EU we'd have democracy right up to the continental level, which is our best chance of peace.