Most of what I want to say's been said already, but we seem to like going round in circles, so I may as well say it again.
Fwiw, I live in an extremely safe Labour seat, the kind of place where if my local Labour MP ever has to rely on the votes of anti-electoral anarchists to keep his seat then it'd mean there'd been some complete and total dramatic collapse, so nowt I do is going to have any impact on the actual result, voting Labour would be just as much an ineffective act of individual expression as not voting or spoiling my ballot.
Also, worth asking what election are we talking here: are we talking about the local elections, which are happening next week or whenever and absolutely will not change whether it's Sunak or Starmer in charge, because they're local elections, or are we talking about waiting for the future general election, in which case it's a bit rich to accuse everyone else of passive inaction if your plan is to sit around waiting for something that will happen at some point before the end of January 2025?
On some specific points:
Tribal Labour voter so yeah.
The worst Labour government will always be better than the best Tory government* (even if by a whisker). Unless you are actively working for a revolution and believe you aren’t that far from success ( or you have the Bader Minehoff view that as a good revolutionary you have to provoke the state into making things worse for the working class to precipitate revolution) then it’s difficult to argue practically against it.
When it comes to specific policies, I tend to think that the Overton window is a really useful concept. There were a fair few pre-Thatcher tory governments that didn't do the things Thatcher did, just as Blair and Brown didn't undo Thatcher's legacy, they just took it forward. Generally speaking, I think on economic policy I would take pretty much any government of the 45-79 period over any that we've had since, and on a range of social issues I'd take any 21st century government over virtually any older ones - LGBTQ rights for instance. It was Blair that introduced private finance to the NHS, it was Cameron that introduced gay marriage, and it was Boris fucking Johnson who brought in an eviction ban and paid workers to sit around not having to do anything. That doesn't make the tories better than Labour, but I think it does mean that the overall environment that governments operate in is more important than the colour of their ties.
And your point is? If there were a pure platonic socialist party with a chance of obtaining executive power I’d vote for it. But such a party doesn’t exist at all. I’ll go for the slightest whisker of improvement for people over and above what they get from the executive arm of international capital.
You don’t agree, that’s fine; stay above the fray in your ivory tower. At least you’ll be able to proudly tell your grandchildren you never compromised or wavered from the one true way.
This is just bollocks. For instance, I think the "
it was Don't Pay wot won the energy price guarantee" argument can be overstated, but there is some truth to it as well. In terms of my own personal activity, I'm not voting Labour, either next week or in the vague general election that'll happen at some point; I am, among other things, active in my union, and we've been out on strike this year. The pay deal we've been offered is nowhere near sufficient, but it's better than what we would've got without striking. We're in the middle of a new ballot now cos we've passed the six-months mark and I've been talking to people today to make sure they vote (in our ballot, not for Labour!), fuck knows where the national pay campaign goes from here but I'm relatively optimistic that we'll be able to use a renewed strike mandate to win real improvements from local management. I can go on about our local t&cs in much more boring detail if anyone wants. But anyway, by the standards of this argument, I'm sat in my ivory tower doing nothing, but if I went out and cast another ballot onto the pile of Labour votes for them to weigh in my safe seat then I'd be doing real proper politics?
This is the bit that keeps being stated as if it is a law of the universe rather than unsupported faith. Where is the evidence that Starmer’s party will actually actually provide a slightest whisker of improvement for people?
And, indeed, where is the line of cause and effect that leads from people in safe seats casting votes that won't affect the outcome in a future general election that's not been called yet to Starmer getting elected?
