Democracy Revisited

Further to Roundup #2 (this blog, 11 April 2010), Unlock Democracy have now published the results of their survey of the various parties` policies, when measured against their own manifesto.

The resulting booklet., which is quite detailed, looks at the policies of 9 parties, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SNP, UKIP, Respect, BNP.

Policies have been measured by a points system, which is expressed as a percentage. The front runners are the Liberal Democrats (81%), closely followed by the Greens (80.5%), then the SNP  (57%) , The Conservatives (46%) and Labour (45.5%). The remaining parties score very low points.

It should be stressed that these markings only relate to matters within  UD`s remit, i.e. democracy and constitutional reform, and not, for instance, economic matters. The other point I would make is that these overall figures are a guideline only unless you refer to the way the parties performed on specific issues - Labour scored very badly on Preventing Voting Fraud, whereas that was a strong area for both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

UD have also taken this opportiunity to launch http://www.votematch.org.uk/ an "online tool to help people decide how to vote in the general election".