Election 2010

Please don’t vote for the Conservatives. Labour are still very much the party of sustained investment in public services, the Liberal Democrats have some good plans for constitutional reform, but the Conservatives remain surprisingly and seriously right-wing. This party align themselves in the EU with anti-Semites, homophobes and climate change-deniers. They plan to squeeze the public sector with a pay freeze and “savage cuts” to tackle an economic problem caused largely by banks and big business. Historically, they have raised unfair taxes such as VAT, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so again as part of plans to reduce the deficit quickly (at the same time raising the threshold for inheritance tax – a move which would be the ultimate “fuck you” to the idea of equality of opportunity).

Gordon Brown’s repeated warning that George Osborne’s policies endanger the economic recovery, risking a “double-dip recession” is not hollow – the private sector that the Conservatives still strongly represent the interests of is not yet growing fast enough to fill the gap left by a huge reduction in government spending that the Tories propose. A return to recession under the Tories would hit the poorest so much harder. That levels of unemployment, poverty, house-repossessions etc have stayed low up to now (in comparison with the recessions of the 1990s) is a victory of the Labour government’s active interventionism – a philosophy so opposed by David Cameron who thinks that now is the time to cut back on what the state offers to the people in the most need.

This is a really important moment in British political history. If Labour or the Liberal Democrats – or most realistically, perhaps, a Lib-Lab coalition – wins power then we can expect to be eased compassionately out of recession, for our antiquated voting system to be reformed to genuinely reflect the democratic judgements of the people, and for levels of investment in the NHS and the education system to be maintained. If however, the anti-progressive minority in Britain vote in high enough numbers for David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Liam Fox et al to form a government, aside from the aforementioned economic and social disasters, we could see a great deal of permanent damage inflicted onto our society.

Most worryingly, they might be able to engineer it so that they stay in power for a long time. Cameron’s plan to reduce the number of MPs by 10% is presented as a cost-cutting exercise, but will actually see him redrawing the boundaries of hundreds of constituencies in what some commentators have suggested would be “one of the grossest acts of gerrymandering in British political history.” They will also, obviously, resist electoral reform, including in the House of Lords which they could fill with as many of their business friends as possible. This will mean that, like in the 1980s and 1990s, the British population will be stuck with a powerful Conservative party, with a mandate from the quiet minority of the population (it will probably always remain at less than a third of the electorate) who are opposed to progress, fairness, equality and compassion. A Lib-Lab coalition, however, would ensure that the views of the decent, progressive majority in British society would always be represented by a majority in government, reducing the Conservatives to the fringe party that I obviously want them to be, but that they also reasonably should be.

I will be voting Labour. Despite the obvious and depressingly numerous failures (see foreign policy, civil liberties etc), they have introduced the minimum wage, cut crime, increased levels of literacy and numeracy, increased child benefit and introduced Sure Start to help the poorest families, introduced civil partnerships, reformed the House of Lords, scrapped entrance fees for national museums, massively increased international development spending, introduced paternity leave and extended the state pension for women. David Cameron’s most compelling argument is “vote for me if you don’t want Brown.”