Pause For Thought

I’m going to be away for the next two weeks, so I just wanted to make a few points about the upcoming General Election.

The Tories have deliberately destroyed any semblance of humanity and respect in public life. They have deliberately underfunded the NHS, not just so they can privatise it if the get the chance, but because it has meant that more of the people they despise (the poor, the rebellious, the other, the unemployed, the mentally-ill, the needy, asylum seekers, immigrants) have been dying. It might not even go too far to say they deliberately mismanaged covid-19 to achieve that goal, too.

And for the last two years at least, as it has been becoming increasingly likely that they would not win the next General Election, they have been deliberately implementing policies to ensure that the UK economy has burned and crashed.

If Labour wins the election (and that’s a bigger if than you should assume), it will take at least a generation of Labour in power to rectify any of the mess the Tories have left the country in. If Labour get in, please don’t expect things to change on Day One. That would be like expecting a raised Titanic to be seaworthy as soon as it reached the surface.

There is also a new danger on the horizon. Farridge and his limited company Reform (which he passes off as a political party, but which is a vehicle which he can directly financially profit from) have now entered the fray. Yes, they may not make a huge difference in terms of seats which they might win, but if Farridge gets in in Clacton, that will be the beginning of a rcist diaster, an even greater one than the Tories so far have been. It would be the beginning of the normalisation of the Far Right in this country (insofar as the Tories have normalised it in their own context already). Please resist the Far Right.

To this end, I would implore you to vote tactically wherever you are. In Clacton, please vote Labour. Elsewhere in the country please vote tactically so the Tories lose their seats. There are several web sites on this, the one I use most being Stop The Tories.

This is not the time to be complacent. There is no guarantee that Labour will win, no guarantee that the Tories will be wiped out, no guarantee that racist Farridge won’t win. Only voting tactically will ensure that we all show how opposed we are to the Far Right, to dogwhistle politics, to the right-wing mainstream media, to xenophobia, to hatred.

So, please vote tactically for the good of the UK and its future generations.