The upcoming general election might be an important one but it’s hard to spot a wave of popular enthusiasm for much that’s on offer. Let’s suspend disbelief and pretend that this site’s readership is a typical cross section of the electorate and see what the polling evidence indicates about the outcome and magnificent variety of voting options. Cast your vote according to what you would suggest the broad masses should do.
What the readers think
The upcoming general election might be an important one but it’s hard to spot a wave of popular enthusiasm for much that’s on offer. Let’s suspend disbelief and pretend that this site’s readership is a typical cross section of the electorate and see what the polling evidence indicates about the outcome and magnificent variety of…
1–2 minutes
34 responses to “What the readers think”
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Of course the problem here is that, due to the particular system we use in this coutnry, only a tiny proportion of people will actually have the chance to vote TUSC or Respect – and only half the country will have the chance to vote Green.
Under those circumstances it’s always going a very concrete proposal addressed by quite a general question.
If I vote Labour at the general I’ll be voting for a rightwing cabinet minister. I’m not inclined to do so, but if I lived elsewhere the prospect might be much more tempting.
I’d add that at a council level the left *should* have a far better prospect of winning actual seats. Certainly the Greens I’ll be voting for at the locals are likely to win as in my bit of town that means retaining seats already held.
(I’m not nit-picking honest, just discussing)
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I voted “something right wing” as I’ll almost certainly be casting my vote for Labour (old habits die hard).
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Liam, you managed to leave off the only non-sectarian, non-opportunist, non-dichotomised, dialectical i.e. reasonable strategy. Vote labour in solidarity with the millions of workers who will be voting with them either because of illusions or simply to stop the Tories. Vote Respect and literally one or two others in England where they have serious candidates and a mass base. Vote Plaid in Wales wherever it has a genuine chance but Labour everywhere else. Avoid sectarian parachutists and Greens (with the possible exception of Caroline Lucas merely for interesting evidence of how the Greens will act on the national stage given some power). It will be bad enough if the Tories are elected but if they are elected as a result of sectarian vote splitting any radical socialist over 40 can forget about politics and might as well take up poetry or knitting.
One place where things could and should have been different is Dagenham where the outside left should have pressured the labour left in the constituency to force Hodge aside so that Griffin could be properly confronted.
There is no doubt that every candidate in the forthcoming election will have to answer for their actions in the light of the result.
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If there is one guarentee at this election it is that the Tories will not be getting in due to the left splitting the vote. In fact it seems unlikely that any Tory MP *at all* will get in on that basis – let alone a Tory government.
On Barking and Dagenham it’s an interesting dilemma for the Labour Party. No matter how vile Hodge is, she is not personally responsible for the fact that the area is the BNP number one target area.
If they stood her down because of the BNP it makes them look ridiculous, stepping a Minister down because they are running scared from a fringe party – in favour of who? It seems unlikely there is a credible Labour candidate that was well known enough without being seen to be parachuted in.
Keeping Hodge, who’s been the MP there for some time has the advantage of not making Labour look like a headless chicken panicked at the first whiff of gunpounder.
It seems to me the idea that Hodge should step down isn’t based on an analysis of how best to keep the BNP out but on how shit she is. Shit or not she’s the best placed Labour Party member to win the seat.
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I voted other.
The correct, non-sectarian and principled position is not above. Left Labour MPs, Respect, TUSC and Left Greens.
That is, a vote for anyone who in any way stands for working class interests. No vote for anyone who does not. Simple.
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ID: so you care not a jot whether the tories get in or not even though the overwhelming millions of workers do? You seek no relationship with these millions and care little for what they think?
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You might just as well argue for a ‘relationship’ with those who vote Tory. Since New Labour and the Tories both openly stand for the interests of business against working people. Only a small minority of Left Labour MPs dissent from this pro-business, cross-party consensus. They deserve working class support. Openly neo-liberal politicians do not.
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I agree with ID- Left Labour MPs, Respect, TUSC and Left Greens should be up there.
But with the proviso that if you have none of the above you should get very drunk and run through the respective merits of the (not left) Labour and Green candidates and vote for the least horrible of these.
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ID: that is just third periodist nonsense and demonstrates the difference between politics and sterile propagandism. You are literally calling for a tory government.
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If I am a ‘third periodist’ how come I am advocating votes for the Labour left?
In the genuine ‘third period’ of Stalinism, the Labour left were denounced as ‘left social fascists’ who were allegedly more dangerous than the Labour right.
David can’t deal with my actual position, so he misrepresents it.
It would help to remember why Marxists advocated votes for Labour in the first place. It was because Labour once claimed in some way to stand for working people against the interests of the wealthy. Therefore, in advocating votes for Labour, one was solidarising with an impulse to oppose the interests of the wealthy.
No one believes that today’s New Labour stands for anything remotely like that.
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I did not read the posts before voting. My combination was ‘other’ and the same as ID. There are some Greens I simply could not vote for and mainstream NL are little better than the Tories in many respects.
My only qualm is that some people on low incomes with children have a reasonable income safety net now.
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`If I am a ‘third periodist’ how come I am advocating votes for the Labour left?’
Because you manage to combine your sectarianism with opportunism. Let the tories in (your actual position) and create illusions in the left reformists.
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Does a phrase like “third periodist” clarify anything in Britain in 2010 and if it’s used should it not come with an explanation of what it means? There’s an outside chance that some people might not understand it.
It may say something of the circles in which I move but I’d forgotten that some people argue seriously that we should not vote for mainstream Labour candidates where no better option is available. Either that or it seemed so odd that it didn’t even cross my mind to include the option.
The poll seems to have succeeded in its objective of reminding us all how fissiparous the situation is.
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“Because you manage to combine your sectarianism with opportunism. Let the tories in (your actual position) and create illusions in the left reformists.”
That’s not an answer to my question. The left reformists in this situation are at least reformists. The mainstream of New Labour are not reformists, they are counter-reformists and basically, Tories in all but name.
If they are not Tories, explain why they have maintained enforced Tory anti-union laws for the past decade, despite having an overall majority in parliament for the whole of that period (and for much of it, a bigger majority than Thatcher ever had).
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I used to think English was a living language before I saw how David Ellis murders it.
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Oh yes, Skidward. You are the jackass who thinks English has a bigger vocabulary than the other languages.
ID: let’s just say you are happy to see a Tory victory perhaps because you think it will help whilst everybody else is doing their best to prevent one.
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Its a tough decision but I am going to be voting for myself because I have this option in the constituency where I vote.
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David: You still have not refuted my point. A party in power that maintains and enforces Tory anti-union laws for more than a decade, with a bigger parliamentary majority than Thatcher when those laws were passed, is Tory in all but
name.Can you argue against this logically?
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Lets put it another way. In 1906 there was a Liberal Party government elected. One of its first and most famous actions was to pass the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, which reversed the infamous Taff-Vale judgement of earlier that year, and restored the rights of trade unionists to strike without facing their unions being sued and bankrupted in court.
Anti-unions laws similar in thrust to those of the Taff Vale judges were passed by Thatcher and Major in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet the Blair/Brown governments, unlike than of Campbell-Bannerman in 1906, have done nothing to repeal them. That is because they wholeheartedly approve of them. Likely Campbell-Bannerman and co also approved of Taff Vale, but they felt they could not ignore the revolt of the working class against Taff Vale and all it represented. Which makes them better than Brown and his predecessor and partner in crime, who have actively sought to suppress any working class revolt against these reactionary laws.
So the Liberal Party in the 1906 was to the left of New Labour today. But Labour was formed to replace the Liberals with an independent working class alternative. One hundred and four years later, is it one? To ask the question is to answer it.
But David can’t answer it. If anyone is advocating a Tory vote, it is him and people like him. For New Labour are in effect Tories, anti-union bastards, and he says we should vote for crypto-Tory anti-union bastards (who are racist bastards and war criminals to boot).
There are some elements in the current Labour cabinet who are to the right of Norman Tebbit when the Grand Hotel in Brighton fell on top of him during the Tory conference in 1984. To evoke a Gallowayism, I’ll leave that comparison hanging in the air….
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You are the jackass who thinks English has a bigger vocabulary than the other languages
Maybe I do. Is that wrong?It seems to be true compared to Spanish for example, and not surprising given English’s multiple origins, its worldwide spread and ease at incorporating foreign words. You don’t appear to use many of them or to wiled those you do in a manner generally comprehensible, if I might say so.Liam – relating to what you say on ID’s point, there are a lot of people who have grown up not considering a vote for Labour to be one for any sort of change. Personally I have mixed feelings on the subject, it’s hard to distinguish most Labour candidates from the pro-business NL thing, and they are all in the same party, but it’s hard not to believe that a through and through capitalist party would not be worse.
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`Maybe I do. Is that wrong?’
Yes, it proves you are a brazen chauvinist. I’m sure the speakers of Spanish will be delighted that you consider them to have a lesser consciousness than the clearly `superior’ English speaker. I’m pretty certain there is nothing that can be expressed in English that cannot be expressed in Spanish or German or indeed Welsh or any African, Arab or native American language you’d care to mention. But no doubt we are all primitives in the face of your civilising empire.
ID: your interests clearly lie in sterile propaganda rather than politics.
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David Ellis – proves you are a brazen chauvinist
Because I’m under the impression that English has a large vocabulary and the facts seem to back that impression up? Does one have to deny reality in order to avoid chauvinism in your book?I’m pretty certain there is nothing that can be expressed in English that cannot be expressed in Spanish or German or indeed Welsh
As it happens a Welsh speaker once told me that the word for “insurrection” in Welsh is the same as that for “revolution”, which makes it a tad difficult to express the thought that the former is necessary to achieve the latter.But of course it’s probably pointless to refute your argument with this example, as you wouldn’t know the meaning of the phrase “I am wrong” in any language. There are phrases in other languages that express ideas that can only be imperfectly translated into English, I tend to feel Schadenfreude when I consider the poverty of your thinking rather than shameful joy. I’d tend to have thought that English tends to me more convenient to express shades of meaning than languages that haven’t acquired several near-synonyms for the same idea from multiple language origins, but not being an expert in comparative linguistics I can’t be sure.But no doubt we are all primitives in the face of your civilising empire.
Please do tell me where this empire might be located so that I might assume control of it. I don’t recall describing anyone as primitive, but if you’d like to think I would append such a description to you, so be it.LikeLike
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“ID: your interests clearly lie in sterile propaganda rather than politics.”
Davide still can’t answer my points politically. This just shows why politics, including left-wing politics, is held in such low esteem by many ordinary people. Simply refusing to answer the point and talking about something else is a technique lampooned on such comedy shows as Yes Minister. When you see it on the left it doesn’t produce a better impression.
‘Politics’ that involves advising workers to vote for racist thugs, human rights abusers, strikebreakers, war criminals and even torturers, and abusing those who dissent from this while refusing to engage politically with such criticisms, is not principled politics. It is opportunism born of desperation. The same kind of desperation that gave birth to Kinnockism and Blairism in the first place.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/rendition-torture-case-secret
This what David Ellis thinks we should vote for. Presumably, he will be out there hectoring anyone on the receiving end of this kind of obscenity that if they don’t campaign for New Labour in the coming General Election then they are into ‘abstract propaganda’ as opposed to ‘real politics’.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for a police state and institutionalised torture. Is that ‘concrete’ enough for you? This government needs to be smashed!
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Blimey ID you’re not going to like the voting suggestions in the editorial of the new Socialist Resistance where, among other things, it says “Voting Labour against the Tories is right where there is no left alternative and as a short-term option, but the long-term task is to create a new, principled left wing alternative to Brown and New Labour”.
The point you make about Labour and torture could have been made at any moment in Labour’s history and indicates nothing of how a major Tory victory would change the balance of class forces.
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“The point you make about Labour and torture could have been made at any moment in Labour’s history and indicates nothing of how a major Tory victory would change the balance of class forces.”
I think the point I made earlier about Labour enforcing Thatcher’s anti-union laws for over a decade, often with a bigger parliamentary majority that Thatcher herself had, have something to do with the balance of class forces, would you not agree?
Its not possible to vote for New Labour neo-liberal candidates ‘against the Tories’, for the simple reason that they are Tories (or at least equally bourgeois and anti-working class as the Tories).
The point I was making was about Labour and the use of police-state methods in general. It is not true that at any point in its history, Labour always stood for developing a police state. A vote for Labour today is a vote for ID cards, and for attacks on civil liberties in general, a number of which, incidentally, both of the more conventional bourgeois parties (Tories and Liberal Democrats) formally oppose. In that sense, New Labour is to the right of both of the older bourgeois parties.
It would be good if there were a left group around that would be prepared to go for the jugular against New Labour and campaign on slogans such as
A vote for New Labour is a vote for torture.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for ID cards.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for attacks on civil liberties.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for benefit cuts.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for a police state.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for the Iraq war.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for the Afghanistan war.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for attacks on sex workers.
A vote for New Labour is a vote for putting asylum seekers in concentration camps!
A vote for New Labour is a vote for a crackdown on immigrants…..(etc etc, the list could be extended considerably.)
That is what a decent left-wing alternative should be doing in this election. The fact that the left has not got the guts or the political clarity to do this, but instead engages in petty squabbles about secondary matters while unifying in capitulation to voting for New Labour as the ‘lesser evil’ (when from the list above, it doesn’t appear like a lesser evil to me), just shows that the left in this country has a mountain to climb before if can present any kind of coherent alternative to anyone.
We need to fight to smash New Labour, not endorse its crimes by hustling votes to re-elect it. The scum deserve to lose.
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It doesn’t make me cross, Liam. Just a little sad at the incapacity of the left to stand up against the pressure of the Labour milieu. Even when Labour is demonstrably attacking its bourgeois opponents from the right we see that. Take a look at Alan Johnson and Harriet Harman’s press conference today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/mar/09/alanjohnson-ukcrime
Harman was at the Compass conference, I recall. Here she is clearly attacking the Tories for being ‘soft’ on crime and campaigning against civil liberties, attacking the Tories for not fully going along with New Labour’s attacks on civil liberties over the DNA database. Her ‘left’ image, of course, is very recent and is partly linked to her uber-feminist stuff. But here, as in her crusade against sex workers, her jackboots are clearly visible.
In some situations where an outright fascist looks like gaining an electoral victory over a mainstream bourgeois candidate, including a New Labour candidate, it might where we have not the strength to field a candidate ourselves, be necessary to vote Labour to keep the fascist out. It is just as concievable, on the other hand, that it might be necessary to vote for a Tory or a Liberal to keep the fascist out.
But why should we build illusions in New Labour by advocating votes to them where the electoral competition is the Tories? They are just as reactionary and anti-working class as any in the Tory party. To tell workers otherwise is to lie to the working class. And to do so in a way that is particularly pathetic, because the similarity between the two is so obvious to many that large numbers will not bother to vote.
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I understand the arguments about voting labour to keep torry’s out when their is no credible left candidate. And if credible refers to a candidate who will get enough votes to advance the left project, which may just mean attracting growing their organisation by a fare bit, rather then necessary one who stands a chance of winning then I agree in theory.
However, as someone under 30 who doesn’t remember when Labour even pretended to be left-wing I could never personally vote for labour – I would rather vote for the lib-dems.
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I won’t labour either ID for similar reasons to you though i think its an exageration to sy we live in a police state or that new labour would create one. Joe Kisolo – I understand why you might prefer to vote lib dem than labour. I remember the lib dems desperately trying to woo the scab miners union the UDM during the miners strike. I’m not sure the Lib Dem opposition was any less unprincipled oportunism than that.
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Its not an exageration to say that New Labour have an anti-democratic, extreme authoritarian streak that is utterly and completely reactionary. Nor is it inaccurate to say that they are standing for election proudly on that and counterposing it to the alleged ‘softness’ of other parties on crime, immigration, etc. The fact that the other main parties are equally reactionary on many of these issues and engage in a dutch auction as to who is the most reactionary is par for the course.
I’m not going to quibble too much with someone who agrees with me on the main issues. But there is considerable reality in the view that a Labour victory in the coming General Election would represent a threat to democratic rights.
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I thought Liam’s question earlier about what a victory for the Tories would do to the balance of class forces was an apt and useful one – but I don’t think it went far enough.
First of all – what does legitimising a *call* for voting Labour as a left vote do to the balance of class forces? Well, it’s certainly something that the union bureacracies will be very happy about as it will strengthen their ‘no alternative’ agenda.
Does it advance the call to democratise union funds for example? Well, no. Just the reverse. It helps keep us in the box.
Second of all – what will the actual difference be between a Tory and Labour government? They both intend to cut public services. They are both anti-union. They both like to pamper the rich.
The differences? Well Tory economic policy is a worse shade of the same general paradigm and they have no hold over the union leadership.
If we’re looking for strikes a Labour defeat may not actually be that bad as Labour hold the unions back and the Tories are, to my mind, too weak to deal with serious working class opposition. Which I argued in the Morning Star yesterday here.
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Where’s the box to tick a vote for the Scottish Socialist party ?
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er… right at the top!
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Liam redux 
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