I hate Tories. And yes, it's tribal

This anti-Tory diatribe by Gary Younge is marred by the call for tactical voting at the end but we approve of anti-Tory diatribes. Feel free to add your own. The visual and musical aid is a reminder that there are things worse than New Labour.

I hate Tories. Not the people who vote for them. But the people they vote for. I make no great claims for that as a political position. But as an electoral category it is crucial. For I’m sure I’m not alone and it’s pretty much the only thing keeping Labour going right now. It’s certainly the only thing that could get me to the polls on Thursday.

I don’t have a phobia about Tories. That would suggest an irrational response. I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about. As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher’s government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.

But it’s not rationality that drives my disdain, it’s a negative tribalism. Tories, like Labour, exist only as a political and electoral category. I was raised in the Labour tribe. But over the last 15 years that tribe left me, or rather showed such disdain for me that I felt I had to leave. They did terrible things I did not want to be associated with. I grew to loathe them, too. But there was lament in my loathing. I wanted them to be better. I thought they could be better. I never had much time for the Liberals. By which I mean I never gave them much thought. I didn’t want a new tribe, and somehow they never seemed tribal enough. I wanted my old tribe back. This isolation came with regret. Labour left me tribeless. The only way I could define myself electorally was by what I was not. And I am not a Tory.

I don’t hate them because they’re rich. I grew up among working-class people and now know a fair number of rich ones, too. I see no more inherent moral quality among those who have little money than those who have lots. The fact that Cameron went to Eton is irrelevant. He had no choice in the matter. I hate him because he supports the rich and wants people who go to Eton to enjoy even more breaks than they already have.

Philosophically this is an impotent rage. I also hate them because for a long time they kept winning, and were able to convince more people than we could by appealing to their most base instincts. Because they managed to change the country in a terrible way and reconfigure the political conversation so that some of the more outrageous things they did are now orthodox. The memory of them and the prospect of them make me want to retch.

I would not dignify this as a political sentiment. It’s a gastro-intestinal and emotional response. But it’s electorally potent. Because unlike others who have written on these pages I can’t think of a single morally compelling reason to vote Labour. I have resisted that call for many elections. I can think of a few reasons one might vote Liberal Democrat – an amnesty for immigrants, proportional representation, getting rid of Trident.

Voting is always a balance between the moral and the strategic. What do I want, what can I get and what do I feel comfortable endorsing to get it. In the past the strategic case was weak, because there was no chance of the Tories winning and the moral case was weaker, given Labour’s record. That’s not true this time.

Indeed the only thing that is really holding my interest at this stage: the one thing that would really make my Friday morning would be to see Cameron crushed and Osborne despondent. To see them miss this own goal and descend into bitter recrimination. To think that however bad things have become, they haven’t got so bad that we would make that mistake again. This may be the worst reason for voting. But right now, after watching them all in the debates, it also feels like the only reason in much of the country (apart from where there are good Labour and Liberal MPs).

These feelings are crude. But their object is subtle. The Tories won’t lose by accident on Thursday. They’ll be defeated by people making careful choices on the basis of what is going in their constituency. Take a look at your constituency, and work it out. I don’t think those who refuse to vote tactically are precious. But I do think they’re mistaken.

Given the challenges of the post-election period I’m not convinced it matters much who wins. But for reasons that are rooted more in emotion, vengeance and resentment than political analysis, I’m equally convinced it matters who loses.

5 responses to “I hate Tories. And yes, it's tribal”

ID

May 5, 2010 at 2:08 pm

Problem is with this is that virtually everything that Gary Younge says about the Tories also applies to New Labour. They too surveyed all that Thatcher had done and liked it, to the extent of including a Thatcherite reference to ‘the rigor of the competition and the market’ into the constitution of New Labour.

Calling class consciousness ‘tribalism’ is a concession to the terminology of the enemy. And when New Labour itself became Thatcherite, such ‘tribalism’ for Labour becomes an appeal to workers to vote for the Iraq War, ID cards, attacks on civil liberties and the whole gamut of other things that New Labour in power is responsible for. That is what a Labour victory (very unlikely) would mean. But the call for tactical voting in this election to frustrate Cameron and bring about electoral reform is perfectly principled.

There is no class axis in this election apart from that posed by Respect (incompetely) and TUSC (better, but too little /too late for the current campaign). So trying to use one’s vote to exploit divisions in the ruling class and fuck them up is perfectly principled. What is not principled is to campaign to re-elect New Labour scum.

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ID

May 5, 2010 at 3:22 pm

And by the way, one thing I am really looking forward to is the possibility of that New Labour racist piece of shit Phil Woolas being defeated by the Liberal Democrats tomorrow.

If that happens i will be having drinks to celebrate. Actually, he needs to be put down like any other rabid (racist) dog, but at the moment we’re not in a position to do that unfortunately. But that would be something of a Portillo moment to see him out on his rancid arse. Here’s hoping!

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TLC

May 5, 2010 at 8:26 pm

The odious Woolas has distributed a particularly nasty piece of Islamophobia to the white areas of Oldham East dressed up as election material. It would indeed be a joy to see him out on his arse come Friday.

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shug

May 6, 2010 at 7:55 am

Like a lapsed catholic, you always dip your finger in the font at a funeral,and the ballot box is the same no matter your creed.

There are 4 million recond undecided voters,on them this election hangs,the selfish.How many of them are beneficiary estate dwellers,not many i would assume.How many estate dwellers are going to vote,how many beneficiers are going to vote

.And that is where it will be lost not on the undecided but by those disenfranchised by a system that uses and abuses,for them to care.

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Fleebite

May 6, 2010 at 10:58 pm

If the tories win then New Labour have only themselves to blame.They took over from where the tories left off and took the country further to the right , plunged us into very bloody ongoing imperialist wars while many were at it lining their pockets as had the tories before them.

They simply ignored, glossed over the gross underlying injustices of life for many forgotten living in dire circumstances on thousands of sink estates, in industrial wastelands across the country under modern day British capitalism and betrayed vast sections of their party membership and voter base losing over 4 million voters (tomorrow will reveal the full extent lost) and over 200,00 party members over 13 years while giving rise to the increased support for the facist racist BNP .

They further perpetuated and deepened already well established tory neo liberal capitalist policies taking the country ever further to the right, sucked up to big business and market forces with an occasional nod to a few substantial and not so substantial progressive achievements such as devolution, sure start, pissy national minimum wage, begrudgingly banning fox hunting (not that this was enforced by any means) when so so much could have been possible and could have been achieved.

However, ‘if ‘the tories win this election it will be because a substantial number of working class voters have left New Labour, moved right and voted the tories in.

What much of the Left still cant bare to face up to is that there has always been a significant number of working class tories and in truth many working class voters voted for the Thatcher and the tories over 18 years and did very well nicely thank you.

The turning point in my view was the Falklands / Malvinas war which broke the back of the Labour party and gave rise to the deep reactionary imperialist passions of millions of white middle and working class Brits who voted her back in with a landslide in 83.

There then followed the historic defeat of the Miners followed by defeat after defeat after defeat for organised labour,the trade union leadership and the Labour party ‘leadership’ was completely lost and at sea and basically sold wokers struggles down the river and capitulated time and time again as they had done to all intents and purposes from day one of the Thatcher regime when the tories came for the Steel workers and the nurses.

The fight and struggle continues as the capitalist crisis of imperialist crises deepen !

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