So, it’s 2 days until the polls open for the European Elections, which means it’s time for me to finally look into the different parties. We’ll ignore the major parties because they’re all too involved in fighting one another to have anything interesting in their policies…

Animals Count – A single issue party in the proper sense of the term. Basically: stop being mean to animals you horrible human; subsidies for livestock should be crops instead; complete ban on all trapping, hunting, shooting, etc for recreation (presumably including pheasant shoots and fishing); a ban on keeping as a pet anything they don’t consider to be a pet.

British National Party – The BNP always worry me. Their website is a masterpiece of spin and phrasing that makes then look incredibly realistic and sane. Then you get to talk to one of them and the world does a quick 180. The general line seems to be: “keep Britain for the British. See those Poles and those Muslims? It’s their fault. Seal the borders, let in only those we like the look of, and then make them speak the Queen’s English and only use money with her head on it. Farking Foreigners.” It’s very easy to make most of those comments look quite sane. It’s even easier to turn them into racism… That said, the BNP has a place in politics, and banning them (as has been done in recent times) is dangerous. Once you ban one political group you don’t like, it becomes much easier to ban the next one…

Christian Party – Now these guys are clever… “Put your X by the cross.” That must have been a hell of a marketing meeting. By and large, they seem to just be interested in making us all behave like good ‘Christian’ types, and ask that all of Europe acknowledges that Europe is what it is today because of Christianity. Sadly, the same could be said about Hilter and the Black Death. However, buried deep in their site we discover that they are 100% against any form of euthanasia, IVF, or surrogacy, and are probably (but not explicitly) against abortion.

English Democratic Party – End to all political correctness (no, really, they actually say that on their site); withdrawal from the EU (probably ‘cold Turkey’, ahaha…); an English regional parliament; and the right to celebrate St George’s day. Quite simply really. They hardly seem insane at all. But then nor do the BNP if all you do is read their site…

Jury Team – Now this is a tricky one… they want more transparency in expenses; a 5 year maximum term for MEPs; and a referendum whenever 5% of the EU want one. How you know 5% want a referendum without having a referendum, isn’t clear. The problem is that that’s where their policies end. They boast that their MEPs will vote as they see fit instead of voting on party lines…

NO2EU – Basically, get out of Europe and give more power to the trade unions. Someone should have told their slogan writer that having “no to racism and fascism” jars with using the slogan “it’s a black and white issue”…

Libertas.EU – These guys get a prize for choosing a name already claimed by a company who sell lesbian literature, forcing them onto a .EU domain name. They make up for this by failing to have any readily found policies on their website. Unless you count this… “We want to end the corruption, stop the waste, put democracy at the heart of Europe and return control to the member nations. We don’t want Britain to be consumed by a bureaucratic European superstate, we want the UK to be a leader in a free, democratic, efficient European Union that only tackles those things that are best done at an international level. ” Well that answers that then…

United Kingdom First – These guys don’t even manage to get themselves on the first page of the results for ‘United Kingdom First’. Smaller government; get out of Europe; no concessions to Sharia law; lower taxes; and strict rules on immigration. That sounds familiar…

UKIP – Get out of Europe; referendum on Lisbon; and strict rules on immigration.

Once you’ve got rid of that little gaggle of weirdos and nutters, you’re left with Labour (aka, New Labour); Socialist Labour Party (aka, Old Labour); Conservatives; LibDems and the Greens.

Two hours researching different parties and I’m still no closer to knowing who I’ll vote for…