https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/dont-tell-me-to-vote-for-your-favourite
At this election, I will be voting for decent human beings
Jul 03, 2024

Last time there was a general election in the UK, I spent almost every day writing about it. This time I would rather be writing about anything but.

Last time around, I felt like a prisoner in the Shawshank Redemption who’d spent the last twenty years digging a tunnel with a spoon to escape my prison. This time around, I feel like I’m crawling through the sewage pipe, and when I finally make it out, my only option will be swimming through a stormy sea where the freezing waters and rip tides are surely going to finish me off. You can forgive my lack of enthusiasm.

The period from 2015-2019 was certainly rough, but at least change was on offer, at least freedom seemed possible. This time the prospect of a Labour government seems as bleak as five more years of Tory rule, if not more so. A Labour landslide could be the worst possible outcome because Starmer’s role is to make you accept the neoliberal shitshow is just the way things are and always will be.

The Labour Party is almost certainly going to win by a record margin on July 4th, but this is going to be no Independence Day. Hell, an alien invasion would at least spice things up! I mean the odds of another species in this galaxy being as dreadful as this shower seems highly unlikely. We were born on the crap planet with the useless leaders and the stupid people. We well and truly drew the short straw, didn’t we?

If we can move on from this masterclass in mangling movie metaphors, I was saying a Labour landslide would not be good for anyone, but least of all Labour voters. Starmer has no intention of doing any of the things Labour voters want. A huge parliamentary majority means he will be under no pressure to honour his broken pledges. He will be able to do whatever he wants… like deporting Bangladeshis, for example. Inspiring stuff, eh?

Starmer is less popular than Corbyn, despite getting a much easier ride from the press. In fact, he is almost as unpopular as Sunak, despite never having served a day in office. Given Sunak is one of the least popular prime ministers ever, this does not bode well.

We are about to have a prime minister coming into office with the lowest approval rating ever, and possibly the biggest majority ever. In other words, our system is about to give absolute power to a man almost no one wants. This is a recipe for a collapse into full on fascism, as the US and France could be about to find out.

This collapse could happen because there is no mainstream socialist alternative and people are going to recoil from the most repulsive bunch of self-serving miscreants in our political history. There is going to be five years of disbelief that voters decided this was the alternative to the Tories.

Labour canvassers have stopped knocking on doors in London because their party is so unpopular. Their candidate in Islington North refused to debate Corbyn, which might have something to do with him making millions from private healthcare. Will this guy really be a better representative for people with so-called Labour values than Jeremy Corbyn? That seat is a two-horse race so you should vote for the guy who champions the poor over the guy who profits from ill health.

When politicians waving “MP for sale” signs say Corbyn lacks Labour values, they mean he can’t be bought. Labour MPs have private healthcare lobbyists embedded into their teams. US corporations have taken over GP practices, and Starmer won’t reverse this, but Andrew Feinstein would. You do realise you could vote for this guy instead of Starmer, right? That’s a thing you’re allowed to do. You don’t need the permission of a newspaper to cast your vote.

Every time I see Andrew Feinstein talking about challenging Keir Starmer for his Holborn and St Pancras seat, I have a Kevin Keegan moment.

Sir Keir Starmer has taken more corporate freebies than all previous Labour leaders since 1997 combined. Wes Streeting wants doctors to work more overtime, but be paid less for doing so. Pat McFadden refuses to say he wants more equality in society. The closer you look, the more awful these people get. Paul Waugh, Labour’s choice to challenge George Galloway in Rochdale, says Sunak has been a very competent prime minister, for god’s sake.

Here’s the thing: Sunak would fit right in with Labour and Starmer would fit right in with the Tories. We could swap them over and absolutely no one would notice the difference. Not even their wives.

Almost every member of the shadow cabinet is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and has said on TV, Israel has a right to starve kids. I’d rather sandpaper my face and gouge out my eyeballs than vote for this. Don’t tell me to vote for war criminals.

Starmer put an Israeli spy in his team and threatens anyone who talks about it with legal action. Israel has been financing Labour staff members. Lisa Nandy calls Jews who object to genocide “anti-Semites”. Rachel Reeves said she would prosecute people with anti-Zionist feelings. I’m going to jail, aren’t I?

There is one reason above all else to not support Rachel Reeves, and it’s not that she has the most irritating hair cut in human history, it’s that she has openly boasted bankers’ fingerprints are all over the Labour manifesto. Is this your idea of change? Because it’s certainly not mine.

Starmerists keep bringing up that the last Labour government did this or that, but they did this and that through investment which Starmer and Reeves have already ruled out, due to their “fiscal rules”.

I want Labour to lose as badly as I want the Tories to lose, but it’s not going to happen so I’m ready for another five years of resistance. What else can I do? I want the Zack Polanskis and Faiza Shaheens and Andrew Feinsteins in charge, not the Wes fucking Streetings and Liz Kendalls. I want my government to represent me and the working class, not private healthcare lobbyists and arms manufacturers. Switching from a blue to red government is like sighing in relief because Jack the ripper has changed his shirt. “Oh, thank god, he looks different now! I’m sure that hammer he’s swinging is for DIY.”

Even the Guardian has suddenly noticed how awful Labour is and warns it’s putting the country’s future in the hands of private finance. George Monbiot, who has been a bit of a flip-flopper over the years, has even come out in support of Corbyn. I had feared he was going to do a Paul Mason, but he took one look at Mason and thought that would be a bit embarrassing. I don’t blame him.

The thing you need to understand is the Guardian comes out in favour of radical change when there is no chance of radical change. Given the choice between Prime Minister David Cameron and Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn, they would choose Prime Minister David Cameron every single time. Cosplaying as radicals is good for business but so is shielding the establishment.

If ever there was a time to break free of the establishment, the time is surely now. Change can never happen unless you vote for it.

If you want to vote with your conscience, or even just self-interest, you can’t vote Labour. There are better candidates in every seat, people who believe in the 2017 Labour manifesto. I want the Greens to have a record turnout. I want to see more independent MPs than ever before. I want the small, anti-establishment parties to take seats. I want to break the idea we can only vote for the red and blue wings of the establishment party. Some of you are making it so hard because you keep voting for people who hate you!

I can hear middle-class cries of “You must be privileged if you can afford another five years of Tory rule!” Sorry, but you can’t vote shame the guy who was raised by a single mother on income support and free school meals and spent years on the homeless register. No one in this country has needed structural change more than me. I’ve suffered a lifetime of your terrible voting decisions!

If you don’t need structural change and are just looking for Labour’s David Cameron, you are the one in a privileged position. The Tories aren’t going to win and some of us can’t afford five years of Labour. You certainly can’t if you’re working class. We’re talking about a party that will do more austerity than the Tories thanks to Reeves’ nonsensical fiscal rules, which basically mean no spending that donors don’t approve of.

The people who tell me to vote Labour need to understand that morally and ideologically (and probably financially), they’re closer to the Tories than I am to them. If Labour is one millimetre from the Tories, and they are one centimetre from Labour, I’m building a spaceship to get as far away as possible!

Middle-class Labour propagandists will go to sleep the moment Starmer’s goons take their truncheons to the working class. Macron could be about to lose to the far right for adopting this strategy in France. Five years from now, we could be looking at Prime Minister Farage, but at least Corbyn won’t be giving us broadband communism. State brutality, I can forgive, but I draw the line at someone getting rid of my monthly BT bill.

Starmerists couldn’t vote for Corbyn out of principle because he once wore a wonky tie. I couldn’t back Starmer out of principle because he supports every authoritarian Tory bill and the mass starvation of children. These people boast they’re not ideological, but their ideology is wear an expensive suit, welcome corporate donations, make privatisation and war look respectable, and implement anti-democratic measures to crackdown on civil unrest. I don’t know about you, but I’m not voting for anyone who is going to kick me in the balls, no matter how soft they tell me their shoes are.