I’ll be voting Labour

“So I felt they were my people, still, after years of NuLab, Mandelson, Iraq, and so on.”

Sad.

British jobs for British workers…

Lucky Steve.

I don’t see why you should vote for her either. Stay home, vote for a protest, or vote LD in the hope that they have more of a chance than it seems in your seat, and to strengthen the case for PR if they don’t.

Who’s your MP, Chris? I think this matters for the calculation.

Just for the record: Lib Dems the only party to oppose war with Iran

doesn’t matter, novakant, because apparently even a million dead in Iraq can’t sway Chris Bertram’s vote, because he feels “more at home” with the people whose party arranged it.

I might try to make a judgment about the candidate specifically (if that’s possible). Totally different system, but for a long time our local Dems were a corrupt and distinctly nasty bunch, and some of their senior elected people are, too. But one of our Senators is much better than his party, and our local Congresswoman, though not very impressive, is a decent person with broadly rightheaded instincts about how to vote.

If there’s time I’ll write a defence of tactical voting. It would take a lot to get me to vote Labour rather than LD, personally (and what it would take would be very clear considerations about the people involved, insofar as I could get information).

I suppose you’ve seen Stephen Fry’s long and arduous post? In brief, Gordon may be awful in his way, but he’s the best at economics.

I’d hate to pile on, but imagine if
“So I felt they were my people, still, after years of NuLab, Mandelson, Iraq, and so on.”
were changed to
“So I felt they were my people, still, after years of torture, Katrina, Iraq, and so on.”

That said, I do understand the sentiment, and can’t share the Guardianista enthusiasm for the Lib Dems, a middle class party led by an Orange Booker who, in coalition in the Tories, would feel little compunction about Thatcherism Mark II.

Or: working class tribal affiliation, however degenerate the mass working class party may be now, is still preferable to the tribal affiliation characteristic of American liberalism, Lib Dems, et al.

What’s the old line? Support Labour like a rope supports a hanged man. To that one might add: Support a hung parliament.

the electoral system is so totally stacked against them

It’s not really, though. If there were more people’s first-choice, it wouldn’t be.

They’re a pretty loathsome bunch, though. (Interest declared: as I may have mentioned in other places, my stepmother is a Lib Dem MEP, though my opinions of her party long predate this being the case.) They really do argue one thing in one place and the opposite in other, and they really do form policy almost entirely on the basis of positioning, putting themselves between the other two parties on principle rather than deciding what their principles are and forming their policies around them. They then parade around saying how superior they are simply because they’re neither one nor the other, which strikes me as a nauseous exercise.

It’s true that in relation to immigration and civil liberties, this isn’t the case, for which they deserve credit, and that as a result they have nobody on their front bench who’s like Phil Woolas or Hazel Blears, and perhaps deserve credit for that too. (This isn’t so true at local party level, where they’ve always attracted chancers and people with dubious opinions.) I guess many left-liberal people who are voting for them are voting for that, and if those are votes New Labour has lost then New Labour deserved to lose them.

But I wish left-liberal people wouldn’t overlook that economically, they’re well to the right, not just because of the Orange Book and their recent adoption of a low-tax policy, but because they’re not left-liberals. There are some in the party, but in general they’re not and never have been that kind of liberal. They’re not at all friendly to trades unionism and Nick Clegg’s remark that Charlie Whelan was “exactly the same” as Lord Ashcroft really should be taken seriously as a guide to how they think: do people really imagine it meant “Charlie Whelan and Lord Ashcroft are both nasty individuals” or do they realise it meant “a trade union funding Labour is exactly the same as a multi-millionaire tax evader funding the Conservatives”? In truth they view active trades unionism in the same light as they do crooked business, i.e. neither is legitimate.

They’ll be enthusiasts for large public spending cuts, especially because these won’t affect so much their largely affluent membership, and they’ll not be slow to red-bait anybody who fights back against them. Including a lot of people who will be voting for them under, I think ,the opposite impression.

Chris B, did you have any thoughts about the Greens – who’ll be getting my own ‘X’ (in a Lab/Lib marginal) come Thursday?

Not much sticking up for the Lib Dems around here, but I’ll have a go.

Anyone who’s been dismayed by things like Iraq, illegal detention and torture, and the erosion of liberties; well, the Lib Dems are your party. Their position with respect to these things is the clearest: they don’t want.

The Lib Dem manifesto tax policies are broadly progressive; there’s a presumption that the less well off should pay less and the better off should pay more, compared with the status quo. I’ve heard it said that the proposed increase in personal allowance is regressive, but I’m not seeing it. Yes, it’s a measure that leaves everyone with less tax to pay, but other changes are also proposed: for example, removing higher rate pension tax relief. What’s more, it’s surely small-L liberal to aim for legislative simplicity: few laws but wide / universal application. Contrast with tax credits.

Finally, the Lib Dems are openly committed to banking reform, including an effort at turning state-owned banks into mutuals. This isn’t obviously progressive, but I think it would have a progressive effect. For that matter, explicit policy isn’t the only thing that counts; a government’s attitude to other institutions also makes a difference. And yes, there’s some Lib Dem scepticism with respect to unions.

I know that there’s a Lib Dem tendency to claim that everyone would join them, if only they were reasonable, because theirs is the reasonable position; and that this gets up everyone’s noses. But look at the alternatives set out on this comments page up to now. Either you’re of a tribe, and you know which it is, or you’re an unprincipled opportunistic bastard. That can’t be an exhaustive categorisation, can it?

Everyone I know in politics also says that about the LibDems, but then everyone I know in politics is in the Labour party, and deeply tribal, and would say it about the LibDems whether it was true or not (they said the same things about lefties, as well, back when there were some, and it was sometimes true, sometimes false, but its being said had no connection to truth or falsity — I knew some of the lefties it was said about and it was like we knew quite different people).

I think Chris Bertram’s post is nothing less than a declaration of political and moral bankruptcy. If this is anywhere remotely close to being representative for the state of left-of center political discourse in Britain (and I have no way of judging whether this is the case, I’m just throwing this into the round), it is scary.

when your moral and political assets and capabilities are exceeded by your moral and political obligations, declaring moral and political bankruptcy is the only reasonable or ethical thing to do.

26:

[unprincipled opportunistic bastard but OK on civil liberties] doesn’t cut it, sorry.

Calling for sacrifice in budget cuts has been a central plank of the Tory campaign. Let’s say the UK electorate rejects that call by denying the Tories a majority. If Cameron were nonetheless helped into power by the DUP, he’d end up asking the whole of the UK to accept budget cuts except for NI. Not a good look: reminds me of the introduction of the poll tax (Scotland got it a year early). (Bear in mind we only have the Telegraph to go on here.)

The Lib Dems will be better than that, but they too will appease their middle-class base. A Labour government will still hurt the most vulnerable but less so.

I’m sorry, but that is universally bullshit. How is cutting the taxes of those on, for example, £10,000, appeasing the “middle class”? What is it with blinkered Labourites and thinking that if you’re not the “most vulnerable”, you’re either some rich baron or bourgeoisie?

This is the kind of deluded thinking that leads to the abolishment of the 10p tax bracket. Oh wait, Labour’s already done that.

I guess this kind of deluded thinking could lead to rising inequality. Oh, dang, that’s already been happening under Labour too.

Yes I could not bring myself to vote for Phil Woolas, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, John Mann, Lucinda Berger and quite a few others.

But is the future of Labour full o’Balls? And is that future dependent upon which bench they spend the next few years?

The way that Lib Dems campaign regionally (dirty tricks in by-elections), and their control of various local councils — one I know in particular is the power-sharing with Tories in Cumbria — disabuses me of any Cleggmania, and I suppose it also makes me wonder how messy any Westminster power-sharing might be. Still think it’ll be back to the polls before Christmas.

@Chris on Lib-Dems appeasing the middle classes (OP, and 41):

I’ve found a piece on taxes and benefits from the IFS (here: http://www.ifs.org.uk/election/launch_browne_phillips.pdf, p30 for summary), is that what you had in mind? Perhaps I’ve misread, but that piece seems to me just to say that the Lib-Dems’ policies benefit upper-middle-income households more than lower-income-households. It’s compatible with that conclusion that they benefit lower-income-households more than Labour in absolute terms. So could you perhaps say a little more on this?

(Actually, I don’t understand why increase in the income tax personal allowance benefits upper-middle-income households more than lower-income households (p22). Anyone?)

Their base, again, composed disproportionately of the worst-off, would become still more marginalized

Sadly, New Labour’s base has long NOT been the worst-off and marginalized. No, New Labour’s base is luvvies – Guardian/Independent/BBC types, academics, naice bourgeois Londerners. The Party should be jailed for fraud. From now on, admitting in public you voted Labour in 2010, will be the equivalent of telling everyone you have the Ebola virus.

Alex> At a guess, it’s because upper-income households are singificantly more likely to have their adult members all earning over £10,000 pa and therefore able to take full advantage of the personal allowances each individual can claim.

Chris B is right and I am voting Lab for pretty much the same reasons. Does anyone really think that the Cons are no longer class warriors of the rich? The Greens are, mostly, mad, and the Lib Dems really just soft-Tory.

soru> Why does a certain specific idle person come to mind w.r.t your last paragraph?

Someone who has the capability and connections to make 100,000 a year and chooses not to is, for any purpose of social justice, still earning that income, but spending it on working less.

I’ve long thought that the difference between social justice and regular justice is things like rules of evidence. This is another point on that scale: for any purpose of social justice, we’re allowed to invent an income for you and blame you for it.

I’d too would like to ‘punish’ Labour for the GWOT/Iraq business. Brown may not have been enthusiastic about the whole business, but keeping quiet and wishing it would go away while signing off on every penny is of course nowhere near good enough. On the same grounds, I’d like to reward the Lib Dems (as well as liking their noises about Trident and ‘illegal’ immigrants, for example). The Tories, who were in lockstep throughout and would have done nothing significantly different – or at least nothing better – if in power, certainly haven’t earned any rewards, of course.

But retribution and reward are not top priorities at this point, even they could plausibly be seen as a necessary part of a system of long-term incentives. (The war has already had electoral consequences in prising Blair out, of course.) In the close 2-way race in my constituency, for the first time since Kinnock I don’t see any alternative to voting Labour. Like CB, I would have considered voting for the Greens if I lived down the road in Pavilion, but that would probably depend on whether I thought they would be likely to vote for Brown and against Cameron in any confidence motions (or whatever exactly it is that would determine the governing party).

BTW, given that every seat counts – and possibly, as CB points out, even every losing vote, though I think Gordon might actually be the man for the job of facing down any attempted power grab from Cameron on the basis of PR-as-tiebreaker, considerations about the individual candidate seem to be pretty irrelevant. The dominant decision is which party to back, whatever the constitution may imply about characters and constituencies. An attempt to assess the likelihood of an individual Labour candidate’s defying the whip in a net positive way seems a bit beside the point in these circs. The urgent imperative is to keep Cameron out.

The Conservatives have done nothing at all to suggest they have moved toward the centre in broadly economic terms – even with a rightward-bound centre. They are run by a bunch of Etonian Bullingdonians, led by a particularly scarily dead-eyed specimen. There is not even the tiny comfort of a Thatcher who was at least (not that it made much difference of course) somewhat opposed to City dominance. There is certainly nothing like a Brown who for all his errors, fudges, compromises and sell-outs from PFI to playing fields (PE, anyone?) to untrammelled monetarism, does appear to have run a parallel benefits system from under the Treasury counter, and evidently does have at the very least the self-image of compassion to live up to.

The Conservatives have, even before getting in, the most hawkish about spending cuts, and flagrant in their ambitions for top-rung tax cuts like inheritance, for example. Their real intentions have to be guessed at, but they won’t have been understating their brutality.

Even the line of verbiage they’ve chosen to fill the ominous silence is actively repellent. All this wittering about voluntarism is familiar enough stuff, now elevated from a weak debating point to a supposed philosophy: ‘other things equal, wouldn’t it be nice if everything were done voluntarily, out of, er, benevolence?’. Other things equal my arse. Tell it to Adam Smith’s baker. Making obligations and liabilities voluntary – repudiable – has only one purpose, as every instance of self-‘regulation’ testifies.

The City is openly salivating at the prospect of Cameron in no 10. If he does get an effective working majority – even with the help of the right-wing of the Lib Dems – he will have the deficit (which must of course be paid off in double-quick time) and the recession as the perfect cover, right at the start of his honeymoon period.

It’s not just the hardship – though that would be bad enough. Under the pretext of an economic state of emergency, there is the prospect of further near-irreversible moves toward the ‘free-market’ paradise that the Conservatives are obviously so keen on – while of course, as ever, being intensely relaxed about people being dirt poor. A spoonful of medicine helps the poison go down.

Not that people need more detail on the ugly reality of the Tory party, but Johann Hari’s article is really rather powerful:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/poverty-and-injustice-in-david-cameronrsquos-model-borough-1962318.html

@48,49: So *both* of the non-Tory major parties are soft Tories? That’s almost as bad as the situation in the US. (Arguably worse, because they can split the not-actually-Tory vote.)

Charlie @ 25:

And yes, there’s some Lib Dem scepticism with respect to unions.

This just in: Pope Leo X expresses some skepticism with respect to Lutherans.

I do wish someone would invent a time machine, then go back and land it on Josef Overton’s grandfather. That way he would never have invented his window, politicians would have nothing to drag ever rightward, and democracy wouldn’t currently be taking such a beating. The fact that there’s such a necessity for tactical voting in the UK, Canada, and the US is extremely disheartening, and does seem to lend weight to electoral reform. Because yes, Canadian and UK Tories need to be kept from majority control, especially the former, even if it means “rewarding” a Liberal or Labour party that fails to inspire. Likewise, the modern-day center-right Democratic Party must continue to receive my extremely grudging support, because the alternative is a rabid anticonstitutional Republican Party that has taken temporary electoral repudiation as a mandate to double down on the crazy. Now, I suppose at some point one must risk the consequences, and hope that the electorate and the parties of the nominal left come to their senses in time, or it’s merely death by inches as everyone lurches ever closer to the righthand edge. But sometimes it looks like “come to their senses” would have to be equivalent to “come the revolution.” And I lack the fundamental optimism necessary to make a good Trot.

How awful; people declaring the conservatives barely capable of matching Labour in the current economic crisis, well that’s a good thing because in the last 13 years Labour have ground England into the dirt, and yet everyone seems hung up on this image that the conservatives are worse.

You only have to look at the statistics for schools, hospitals, unemployment/population ratio’s and a WAR to realise that Tony Blair is the antichrist.