Vote as Left as You Can

Everyone's doing their voting recommendations. The Sunday Times begrudgingly came out for Labour. The FT were more enthusiastic with their endorsement. And always wanting to associate themselves with success, The Sun are endorsing Keir Starmer too. But ... what about this place? Having spent the last six weeks prattling on about scandals and stupidities, no recommendation has been forthcoming from these here parts.

Before leaving Labour, I was minded to make an argument not dissimilar to that (disingenuously) pushed by the Jewish Labour Movement and The New Statesman in 2019 I.e. No recommendation of a blanket Labour vote. Their positioning was driven by an overall desire to see the left defeated so the right could salvage Labour from the post-election wreckage. This time, there is zero chance of electoral calamity. As always, the left's position should be in mirror image of what they did then. That is mobilising from a desire to strengthen the position of left wing politics.

As we know, Labour are going to win and win big. But the projected low turnout, the Green Party's positioning, the strong challenges from independent lefts in a handful of seats and George Galloway in Rochdale, plus the traction these are getting on social media has led to a few furrowed brows. The higher ups read the same polls as everyone else. Regardless of the coming vainglorious outpourings post-election, harder heads know there's no love for Starmer or "changed Labour". They understand that many of the seats delivered on Friday morning are partly because of a split on the right and the generalised anti-Tory mood. And that the right will possibly be neutered as an oppositional force for a while has led to the finger wagging "if you want change, you've got to vote for it" slogan.

Millions do want change thank you very much, and have absolutely no faith a Starmer government will deliver it. Therefore, as per the arguments made by Owen Jones and many others, under these circumstances Labour needs to feel electoral heat from the left. This begins with rejecting outright calls for a comprehensive anti-Labour vote. It remains likely that the only socialists who will stand up to Starmer on the backsliding from the few decent commitments in the policy-lite manifesto, on his failures over Gaza, on racism, and on climate change are those elected on a Labour ticket. But electing Labour left wingers is not enough, seeing as recent experience has shown they can be cowed by whip removal/deselection threats. So the returning of Green MPs and independent lefts, such as the disgracefully discarded Jeremy Corbyn and Faiza Shaheen, would serve as a reminder that the left has more heft than street mobilisations. In this context and in nearly all cases, votes for socialist/communist/far left groups are wastes of time. Not because I'm an incorrigible sectarian, but because they generally mean nothing to their recipients and don't lead anywhere. Regarding the petit bourgeois and populist character of the Workers' Party of Britain, my recommendation for those contemplating supporting them depends on the political character of the candidate.

What about tactical voting? As left wing votes should be guided by strategic thinking, and that building left pressure in parliament is guiding most of the extra-Labour left's campaigning efforts, that logically entails minimising pressure from the right. To be sure, having the Tories come third won't be a magical cure-all for the baleful influence the right has, but it would constitute a historic defeat of the most class conscious and reactionary sections of British capital. As a rump Tory party gets on with its civil war with Farage's Reform, the greater the opening for left and Green positions to steer oppositional politics to Starmerism. That doesn't just mean putting on the nose peg and voting Labour in the raft of marginals the Tory collapse is opening up, but also doing the same in straightforward Liberal Democrat/Tory and SNP/Tory fights.

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