For Tomorrow (X) – None of you stand so tall

Here’s my advice, for anyone who’s interested.

Don’t vote Labour.

Don’t vote Conservative, don’t vote UKIP and for God’s sake don’t vote Veritas. But don’t vote Labour. Here are 35 reasons (hat tip to Ellis Sharp). Iraq is at numbers 11 and 22. There are another 33. The name Blunkett doesn’t even appear on the page.

There are values which have been associated with Labour throughout its history: even under operators like Wilson and Smith; even under chancers like Kinnock; even during the long retreat in the face of Thatcherism. Under New Labour, that’s all gone. Maintenant c’est joue’… The party of the Left must be built, and it won’t be built in a matter of days. For now, what’s essential is for the Left to withdraw its consent from the representatives who have betrayed it. If you want to vote for the values which Labour once stood for – under Hardie, under Attlee, even under the member for Monklands East – don’t vote Labour.

This isn’t about the war, except insofar as the war has shown a lot of people in their true colours. As I wrote back here, “this is a single-issue election – and the issue is New Labour.” From which it follows that I don’t advise anyone, anywhere, to vote for a Labour candidate. Not even if they’ve got a good record on the war; not even if they’ve got a good record on control orders and ID cards and tuition fees; not even if they’re Jeremy Corbyn, frankly. (Sorry, Jeremy.)

The objection that these tactics will lose us some good MPs misses the point. This is a boycott. If boycotting something – goods from a certain country, say – didn’t involve forfeiting choices we would normally make, there’d be no need for the boycott: the invisible hand of the market would do the job for us. Boycotts, by definition, cannot be relied on to deliver an optimal choice: that’s not what they’re for. What they do is signal that there are choices we are not willing to make – positions that we are not prepared to endorse – even at a cost to ourselves. I’d hate to have a Tory MP, but I would rejoice to see my Labour MP’s vote drop far enough to make that a possibility.

While Labour is controlled by the New Labour clique (and it is – these people are serious about power), nobody running as a Labour candidate deserves our support. It doesn’t matter whose name is on the ballot paper. It doesn’t matter if Labour won last time or came second or third. If you can’t stand the Trots and the tankies, vote Lib Dem. If you can’t stand the Lib Dems, vote Green.

Don’t abstain. Don’t be an idiot and vote Tory.

But don’t vote Labour.