Democracy is heading towards crisis in the UK. Russell Brand (who Prospect magazine recently voted the world’s fourth most influential figure) says that it has been in decline for sometime. It is a political system that has disenfranchised and disillusioned millions, and Brand refuses to vote for the “lies, treachery and deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations”.

Voting statistics scream disillusion loudly. 65 years ago more than 80 percent of registered voters cast their ballot in the 1950 UK general election. On Thursday May 6, 2010, at the previous general election, only 65 percent of the electorate  voted. 9.1 million women decided not vote, 8 million men stayed at home, and millions of people are missing from the UK’s electoral register. In a functioning democracy, it is unacceptable that millions of people who are eligible to vote are missing, says the House of Commons Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform. But, if voting only provides the option of choosing to be punched either in your right eye, or your left eye (as Brand recently put it), why should we vote?

The punches thrown by some parties may hurt more than others. The Conservative party (popularly also known as the Tory party), the main governing party today, is certainly not holding back. It has overseen the “greatest fall in people’s pay packets since Queen Victoria was sitting on the throne in the nineteenth century”, according to political commentator Owen Jones. While claiming to be a party for working people, it has introduced measures that transfer money from the working class, to the wealthy.

The Tory party has a history of being considered the political party “of the rich, by the rich, for the rich”.  If you are undecided, below are twelve reasons not to vote Tory in this year’s election:

1. Economy

Wealth inequality has risen sharply in the UK since the 1980’s, and it has risen again since the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis created by the world’s wealthiest and most privileged economic and political elites. Wealth inequality rose four times faster in the seven years after the crash compared with the seven years before. Although wealth inequality rose under Labour, it has risen faster under the current Tory led government. The Conservatives insist that the best way to lift the country out of a recession is to create an environment favorable to big business. This means creating a flexible labor market, where businesses have more rights than employees. But, such an approach has not benefited ordinary people, for whom living standards have declined. Figures show that working people are £1,500 out of pocket since 2010. Prices for goods are rising faster than wages. The current government’s economic policies have ensured that the rich have got richer, while average real earnings for ordinary Britains – adjusted for inflation – are not expected to return to their 2009-10 levels until 2018-19 (teleSUR analysis).

2. Tax

George Osborne, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, has claimed that everyone in the UK has been “all in it together” in addressing the country’s deficit. But, a November 2014 report by economists at the London School of Economics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, found that money has been transferred from the poorest to the better off as a result of Conservative party designed and led government policies. Income has been transferred from the poor to the affluent partly through changes to benefits and tax credit changes. The researchers found that lone-parent families, large families, children, and middle-aged people clearly lost out as a result of Tory economic policies, with money being stifled from them to the wealthy.

3. NHS (Natinal Health Service)

The Conservative party does not have a good track record here. Ken Clarke, who served as Margaret Thatcher’s Secretary of Health, told the BBC; “I’ve closed more hospitals than most people have had hot dinners”. Today, the NHS is open for private business. In 2012, forty types of NHS treatment were covered by private contractors. Today, the range of NHS treatments open to private providers has doubled. Two thirds of all NHS contracts have been won by private providers. Among the winners of the biggest clinical contracts are three firms heavily criticized for poor performance. Private companies prioritize profit over health. In June 2014, Tory public health minister, Jane Ellison, was secretly recorded saying that the government could no longer exert much day-to-day control over the NHS, and that reforms being implemented meant that the NHS was on a high wire without a safety net, which she described as “exciting”. Many high level Conservative politicians are in bed with the companiestendering for NHS work. David Cameron (current Prime Minister and head of the Conservative party in Britain) handed a peerage to nursing and care home tycoon Dolar Popat, who has given the Tories more than £200,000 in donations. Harriet Baldwin, Tory party whip, is a former executive at JP Morgan, a major player in private healthcare.

4. Social services and welfare state

Social and material well-being in the UK has been significantly hampered by the slashing of public spending on health, welfare benefits, housing, and legal aid, which the Conservatives say is necessary to lift the country out of debt. But millions of vulnerable people – including victims of domestic violence and disabled people – have been made to pay for crisis they did not cause. A pregnant woman with mental health issues had to walk more than 2 miles to a food bank, the number of hungry children is sky rocketing, and a number of disabled and vulnerable people have taken their own lives after having their benefits taken away. The leader of the UK’s headteachers’ union recently said that schools are becoming the emergency health departments of communities, with teachers increasingly being called upon to support families struggling to deal with the impact of austerity. Despite the Conservative party’s austerity policies, national debt has increased. There is no rhyme or reason to keep them in place.

UK austerity policies are the toughest of 32 major world economies. Yet, the Conservatives advocate for permanently reducing state spending going forward. They promise to reduce government spending to 35 per cent of the economy, and to carry out £40 billion (US$60 billion) of cuts. Such little government spending was last reached during the 1930s, prior to the creation of the modern welfare state. The Labour party and the Scottish National Party propose significantly smaller cuts, and propose increasing national income by seriously addressing tax-avoidance. Labour plans cuts of just over £1 billion. Only the Greens have a clear policy against austerity, which it says is “making the poor, the disadvantaged and the young pay for the greed and the fraud of the bankers”.

5. Housing

Tenants in social housing bear the brunt of welfare cuts. The current government introduced a bedroom tax where those in receipt of housing benefit can have their claim limited if the they have “spare” bedrooms. At the same time, council homes have been sold off to private developers. This has made London unaffordable for many, including young single mothers who have been at the forefront of resisting the “social cleansing” of London. Diane Abbott MP (Labour party) says that rent controls are necessary – and they are. The housing crisis in the UK has been emerging for some time. Yet, the Conservatives cut the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit which gave advice and set non-binding targets on the number of homes that should be built each year nationally and regionally in response to the emerging crisis. House prices have rocketed in recent years, and so has homelessness, especially in England. There were at least 97,210 homeless people in 2010, a number which increased to 113,270 by 2013.

6. Environment

In 2010 the prime minister has said he wanted his coalition administration to be “the greenest government ever”. Under the UK’s Climate Change Act, successive British governments are obliged to minimize the greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, David Cameron, has pushed forward an Infrastructure Bill completely at odds with existing obligations. The Infrastructure Bill obliges governments to produce strategies for “maximizing the economic recovery of UK petroleum” and includes provisions “to introduce a right to use deep-level land” for “petroleum or deep geothermal energy”.  In supporting such measures, and fracking specifically, David Cameron puts our health at risk. Fracking will contribute to rising carbon emissions – threatening us and future generations, and without bringing energy prices down for households today. While countries such as Bangladesh experience the impact of climate change most oppressively, Britain is not exempt. In January and February 2014, parts of the UK (Oxfordshire and Berkshire) suffered some of the worse flooding in recent memory. In the years preceding the floods, our current Conservative led government failed to invest in flood defenses. Continued failures to do so will put an extra 330,000 properties at serious risk by 2035.  Perhaps the only thing worse you could do would be to vote for the UK Independent Party (UKIP). One UKIP counselor thought that gay marriage (and not climate change) had caused the 2014 floods.

7. Education

The current coalition government has presided over the disintegration of our school system, and engaged in an unrelenting assault on teachers’ pay, pensions and conditions and their professionalism. Untrained teachers have been invited to equip our next generation’s minds, while the government has eliminated the teaching of skills; instead prioritizing mindless rote learning of a slanted patriotic version of history. Fewer individuals from working class backgrounds have obtained the results needed to go to university. The Education Maintenance Allowance was scrapped, and the Tory led government introduced a massive hike in university tuition fees. If you started university in 1997, you would have received free university education. In September 1998, the Labour party introduced tuition fees, with students being required to pay up £1,000 a year, and then later £3,290 per year. Scotland has abolished tuition fees, whereas in England and Wales there have been hikes up to £9,000 a year under the current government.

8. Threat to Freedom of Speech and Expression

The Conservative party manifesto proposes outlawing groups that “ferment hate”, by introducing banning orders for “extremist organizations”. The banning order net could be cast far wider than the Islamist “preachers of hate” and neo-Nazis that the Tory party ostensibly has in mind under this proposal. Political activists that propose deeper and wider citizen participation in politics, and truer democracy, could be caught. The national extremism database already includes the names of people who have organized non-violent meetings on environmental issues. Between 1988 and 1994 Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were banned from the airwaves by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory party. The intention was to “deny them the oxygen of publicity”. Today, Sinn Féin is the most popularparty in Ireland.

9. Scrapping the Human Rights Act

The Tories want to scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a British bill of rights. They tell us this will make it easier to deport criminals from the UK, but it has the potential to threaten us all. Human rights keep families together, and helps protect women and children from violence. Last year, two women who were systematically failed by police after reporting being attacked by a serial taxi driver rapist (who is believed to have attacked at least 105 women over a six-year period), received compensation under the Human Rights Act. The Act requires transparency and accountability for actions taken by the authorities responsible for protecting us. Human rights law ensured that a mother could force an inquest into her daughter’s death. The jury in the inquest found thaterrors by the prison, parole board, probation services and other agencies directly contributed to her daughter’s death. These types of findings can help hold our institutions accountable. Only truth and transparency can ensure that our public services learn from their mistakes, and do not repeat them.

10. Immigration

Successive governments have scapegoated immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees for an economic crisis caused by elites. The current Conservative led government introduced “Go Home or Face Arrest” vans in October 2013 but was forced to take them off the streets. In 2013, the government got rid of the UK Border Agency, giving responsibility for immigration back to the Home Office. But, troubles have not abated. The government has introduced an irresponsible and unworkable Immigration Act (2014) which heightens the bureaucratic nightmare that the Home Office inherited from the UK Border Agency. Then, in addition, those detained in immigration detention centers and those forcibly removed from the UK are subjected to racism and abuse, and at the women’s center, Yarl’s Wood, detainees have said that they have been offered favors in return for performing sexual acts.

11.  Accountability and Transparency

The Conservative party was widely criticized in November 2013 after it removed all its pre-General Election speeches and news articles from its website and from all web search engines. Former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott tweeted: “How do Tories stop being accused of breaking election promises? By DELETING all pre 2010 speeches & press releases”. Lack of transparency is endemic within the party. Conservative party officials have been linked with cover-ups to protect politicians, judges and police officers involved in a pedophile network in the 1980s, in which at least two boys were killed. Theresa May, the current Home Secretary, has announced an inquiry into whether public bodies did enough to investigate child abuse claims in the past. But, it is unclear whether the inquiry will be able to inspect files considered to be “classified”. This is clearly unacceptable. The Conservative party has also failed to establish an independent inquiry into allegations that British forces were complicit in torture in Iraq.

12.  Of the Rich, By the Rich, For the Rich

The Tories receive donations from the very wealthy, and pursues policies for the wealthy. In 2013, lobbyists and oligarchs paid up to £12,000 for a table at the Tory summer party. At a February 2014 ball, the Conservative Work and Pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, who has overseen a wide-ranging program of welfare cuts, entertained the directors of the doorstep lending firm CLC Finance, which advertises loans at a 769.9 per cent annual interest rate. The then Housing Minister, Kris Hopkins, sat with two of London’s top property executives, and luxury property developers. These are the people that the Tories work for. Not you and me.