First-time non-voter

I've been thinking about who I'm not going to vote for at the next general election for a while now. I think it was the debacle over Kennedy that may have finally pushed me into the arms of the UK's largest political wing, the None Of The Above I mean.

Up until 2001 I had always voted Labour. Post-Iraq I began shopping around and at the last election voted Lib Dem because they reminded me... well of the people I thought I was voting for back in 1997.

But the nastiness over Kennedy, the pomposity of Ming, mendacity of Hughes, the opacity of Who seem all too familiar to someone already let down by Labour. Charlie-boy may have been a genuine Whig but his replacements all look like the rest of our parliamentarians - reactive Tories of one hue or other.

So what's left then?

Respect: a mix of everything that was wrong about Old Labour along with a nasty streak of anti-Semitism/ fascism courtesy of their MAB bedfellows. Headed by a moustachioed firebrand, they would probably be better re-branded The National Socialists... well, they're national and they're socialists, aren't they?

The Greens: running a close second to the Conservative Party among graduates of agricultural colleges, they're really just a bunch of aristos who hark back to the days when the toffs ruled the countryside, there were none of these nasty corporate johnnies getting the best seats at the opera and their tenants knew their place. In short: Zac Goldsmith.

Speaking of which: Camonblair... well the name says it all really.

So why not go back to a post-Blair Labour Party? Because Brown will be the same but worse. Because Labour are already kept in power by a bulwark of Scots MPs who do to the English what the English used to do to the rest of the world: impose laws that have no force in their own land while soaking up English taxes to fund educational and health services denied to those south of the border.

The last thing we need is a Scottish PM whose only real interest will be to keep the milch cow chewing the cud while exercising the kind of brutish rule on the English (remember PPP on the Tube?) he would never dare impose at home.

Now the economic argument is over the only socialist bone left in the government's body is its least attractive one: authoritarianism.

While we can be grateful it failed in its first attempt to restrict our freedom of speech, don't forget it succeeded second time around. As the case of the Nat West Three illustrates, thanks to 2003 legislation Britons can now be extradited by a foreign power with no requirement of habeas corpus (a step the Americans would never dream of taking). Meanwhile octogenarian protestors at Labour Party conferences are arrested under anti-terror legislation and peaceniks at the Cenotaph under laws barring protests within hearing distance of Parliament (you really couldn't make that one up could you - no dramatist would have gotten away with it).

Deceit (and deceit and deceit) has become almost a requirement for office, while ministers assure us that we can trust them with new laws that will enable them to amend any legislation without the say of Parliament. This is before one mentions fresh terror legislation, identity cards and the like, some of which may actually be necessary, but can we really trust anything this bunch say?

As Mary Ann Sieghart points out in today's Times, with all the main parties moving to the centre, choice will become more a case of personality than policy. But who would want to vote for any of these monkeys?