After yesterday’s poor start I’m hoping that today’s contestants, No2EU, will turn down the crazy.

Web Presence

Not bad actually. Pretty static but it contains links to twitter, their facebook page and a nice little video that summarises their position. Where they fall down is that it’s hard to find out anything substantive about the individual candidates.

After this positive start I discover that the front-man for No2EU is none other than Bob “Tube Strike” Crow of the RMT. Like a lot of people who have had the pleasure of commuting to work on the Tube I would much rather punch Bob Crow in the face than vote for him.

Also the lead candidate in Wales is the head of the Welsh Communist Party. I don’t find that terribly appealing.

Policies

As you may have guessed from the name No2EU are not big fans of the European Union. They marshal their arguments into several main themes. The first is that the EU’s commitment to free-trade and free movement of labour will lead to poorer wages and working conditions.

The Single European Market, created by the Tory government with the Single European Act in 1987, creates a pool of working people to be exploited and treated no better than a commodity like a tin of beans. These EU rules allow employers to escape from national collective bargaining and employment legislation and impose lower wages and worse working conditions, creating a “race to the bottom”.

Now I’m quite a big fan of free markets. I believe that liberalising trade and labour are generally more helpful than harmful. So this argument doesn’t really sway me.

After this they try to convince you that the Lisbon Treaty will outlaw the NHS. No really.

NEW EU HEALTH DIRECTIVE WILL PAVE THE WAY FOR PRIVATISATION OF NHS

See, the thing is that the EU is made up of countries that are almost entirely wedded to the idea of socialised healthcare free at the point of delivery. Can you really see the French buying into that? Or the Swedes? It’s just scaremongering. The real directive as far as I can tell is actually about allowing people to get treatment in other member states than the one they are resident in. The directive can be found here along with a slightly friendlier summary.

One of their other main points (which the articulate well in their video but not on their website) is that the EU Commission (the bit of the EU that proposes legislation) is completely unelected. Now I happen to agree that this is one of the least attractive parts of the EU. I would be much happier with legislation being proposed by an elected body.

Which brings me to “vote for us or the BNP might get in”. I hate it when political parties do this. If you have to bring the BNP into this to get me to vote for you then haven’t done a good enough job of selling your ideas to me.

European Policies

No shortage of EU-specific policies as we have seen.

Not Mental

I disagree with their view of Economics, but they are clearly not crazy.

Summary

Their characterisation of the EU Cross-Border Healthcare Directive skates pretty close to being an outright Lie. And while I sympathise with their dislike of some of the less democratic elements of the current EU structure that isn’t enough to make me want to vote for a Communist.

The European Elections are ominously close. Like a lot of people I’m finding myself disenchanted with the mainstream political parties. This state of affairs might drive me to abstain where it not for the fact that the European Elections are held under a form of proportional representation. So a vote for a minor party is not necessarily a wasted vote.

If I’m going to consider voting for a minor party then I need a set a criteria that are bit more rigorous than “I don’t like the look of that person”, so let’s see if we can break it down into some catagories.

1. Decent web presence. Since this will likely be my main source of information about the party it is important. Bonus points for candidates speaking with their own voice. Extra bonus points for actual conversations with voters (comments, twitter, forums etc).
2. Detailed policy suggestions. One line policies don’t help me much without context.
3. European Policies. You are running to be an MEP not an MP, act like it.
4. Not mental. I prefer my politicians to be reality based.

So let’s get this magical merry-go-round started by looking at the Welsh Christian Party. I would take the main party into consideration as well but they appear to have over-run the bandwidth limits on their web hosting. Classy.

Their web-site is simple and direct, but lacking in detail. The thing they seem most worked up about is that most children in Wales are not educated in faith schools. They have short bios of their candidates, but nothing dynamic and I have no idea how they or their candidates feel about recent news items.

The policy section consists of a long list of one-liners many of which are completely impossible to interpret.

4.Reinstatement of Section 2A –end of promotion of homosexuality

To be fair at least they didn’t lead off with the institutionalised homophobia, they waited a whole three policy items before pushing the “culture wars” button.

13.North-South road and rail link

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the middle of Wales has all these mountains in it. Which is why it doesn’t currently have good north-south road and rail links.

17.Renewable energy

What? Are you for it or against it? In either of those cases what are you going to do about it?

21.Parental rights for medical treatment of under 16s

Without context it’s hard to say, but given the tenor of the rest of their site I suspect this is code for “the right to let my child die of a preventable disease because the liberal bias of reality conflicts with my faith”, but I could be wrong.

23.Adoption in heterosexual duel sex families

24. Mandating the use of proof-reading for all policy documents.
Actually what they are talking about is not letting homosexual couples adopt. Hang on a minute how could a heterosexual family be anything other than dual-sex? Perhaps I am being to harsh. Maybe their real beef is with hermaphrodites.

30.No identity cards

Credit where credit is due. I actually agree with them here.

32.Fairer justice system

And I’d like a pet cat that shits Midget Gems. How are you going to achieve this?

To be serious for a moment they don’t appear to have thought through many of these policies. It seems like a fairly eclectic collection of policies designed to appeal to culturally conservative christians. Being neither I don’t find these particularly appealing.

They don’t appear to have any European policies so they don’t score well their either.

It’s also pretty clear that they fail the “not mental” test pretty heavily as well. If the only choices on the ballet were them and the BNP I’d stand for office myself.