European, Local, London Elections, Who gets your vote? Options

[Polocrunch]

Everyone around the world is invited to vote in our Matazone mock-elections for Europe, local councils and London. When you vote, you'll be voting for three things: who you want as Mayor of London, who you want to represent you in the European Parliament, and who you want running your local council. Currently, the Mayor of London is Ken Livingstone (Labour), the European Parliament is dominated by the Christian Democracts (Conservatives), and local councils are split fairly evenly between Conservatives and Labour, with a strong Liberal Democrat showing. Please give reasons for your vote - this is not meant to be a secret ballot!

I appreciate that I've missed out the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Northern Irish parties, but the purpose of this thread is to discuss UK-wide politics.

These elections coming are one of the most interesting elections ever to be fought. For the first time ever, the election campaigns are being fought over managerial rather than ideological issues. I urge you all to take this into consideration before voting.


Before you start voting, I'll just give a quick run-down of each party (apologies for lack of balance! If you want something more reasonable, I've provided links to party websites in the names):


New Labour:
Supposedly left-wing, but in reality their policies during the last seven years have been moderate-to-right-wing. On the environment movement has been slow but encouraging. The Labour government has massively increased funding of the Health Services, and some improvements have been noted. However, two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, which is a huge failure on the part of the government. Transport has continued to deteriorate, though bus services have improved somewhat. Violent crime has risen, though petty crime has fallen in equal amounts, and there are several thousand more officers on the streets. Child poverty has decreased, employment is at an all-time high, and the economy has been stable for the last few years. This is despite a recession in Europe, North America and Japan.
Schools and Universities have continued to face funding crises, and the contentious Higher Education Bill containing top-up fees has been passed (narrowly). Tony Blair has promised that Britain will join the Euro and sign up to the European Constitution (subject to referenda). The Blair government was responsible for taking us to war on Iraq. The Blair government was also responsible for devolution (in NI, Wales, Scotland and London) and the Northern Ireland peace process (currently stalled). Botched reform of the House Of Lords has been an embarassment, and fox-hunting still has not been fully illegalised.

Conservatives and Unionists:
After a pretty disastrous election campaign focussing entirely on "saving the pound", the Conservatives have only improved their position slightly. Their new leader, Michael Howard, has been marginally more successful in the polls, pulling ahead of Labour in the last few months. The Conservative leadership remains staunchly Eurosceptic, wanting to pick-and-choose which parts of the EU we sign up to, but insist that we must remain inside Europe. The Tory party remains in some disarray, split as it is on the matter of Europe and other areas. Most of its policies are in line with Labour's, seeing as those are moderate and right wing. On education, health, transport and justice the Conservatives have made obvious their commitment to good management and reform.
Constitutionally, the Conservatives have kept fairly quiet, only criticising the government on managerial failures - such as the cost of the new Scottish Parliament building, or on the West Lothian question (Scottish MPs can vote on English domestic matters, but English MPs have no say over Scottish domestic matters). The Tories have also been critical of slapdash reform of the Upper House and judicial reforms.
The Tories were in favour of the war on Iraq, but have since withdrawn their support because of a lack of WMD. The Conservatives have urged Blair to distance himself from Bush. On the environment the Conservatives have not much new to say - keep Britain clean and beautiful, that kind of thing. On law and order the Conservatives maintain a tough stance, particularly regarding anti-social behaviour. Not much complaining has been heard over the economy, for obvious reasons (nothing to complain about!).

Liberal Democrats:
Sorry, I should really devote more time to the Lib Dems, but I have to get of the computer. Everything you need is on their website (as long as it doesn't freeze up like it did for me). The Lib Dems are just... reasonable and nice. End poverty, make Europe work efficiently, be nice to other countries, improve the environment, reform things properly, blah, blah, blah. The big problem with the Lib Dems is their public showing. Charles Kennedy's a nice guy, but he's not very strong. The Lib Dem's get pretty poor publicity, and frequently come across as weak and compromising.

UKIP:
The UKIP's policy on pretty much everything is: GET BRITAIN OUT OF EUROPE!!! It wants to maintain British independence and sovereignty by keeping us well away from the EU. Free trade should be kept, however. In every other area they are mainly in favour of making Britain more efficient, better managed and properly run.

Greens:
Sorry, I'm running out of time here, so this'll be short. The Green Party's main aim is to improve the environment. They want everyone to recycle everything, carbon emissions to be cut, and any other green policy that you can think of. Best to look at their website (link in the name) for other policies. Moderate on everything else.

BNP:
I can't write anything balanced here. They're a bunch of racist thugs in suits. They're authoritarian nationalists and slightly socialist.
Nationalist + Socialist = ?