Why tactical voting is a load of old Balls

By Paul Richards

There’s a rule in Labour’s rulebook which decrees that any party member who advocates a vote for another party is expelled. Presumably Ed Balls, Peter Hain and others who suggested that Labour supporters vote Liberal Democrat in marginal seats this week thought they’d used enough coded language to avoid expulsion. But you don’t need an Enigma machine to work out what they meant with their talk of ‘intelligent voting’ to keep the Tories out in seats such as North Norfolk.

I have several problems with the concept of ‘tactical voting’. The first is that when politicians call for tactical voting it suggests that they see voters as pawns to be moved around on a political chess board in pursuit of their own advancement. It suggests a top-down, elitist approach to politics.

The second problem is that it is a wholly negative act. You vote tactically for something you don’t believe in to stop something else you don’t believe in, but consider to be worse. It reinforces the idea that voting is an exercise in choosing the least worst candidate. This serves to fortify the cocktail of cynicism, apathy and nihilism which is eroding our democracy. Voting should be a positive, celebratory act, performed in the pursuit of noble causes. Calls to vote for a party you don’t support are cynical and manipulative.

Third, it can cut both ways. Former Labour minister John Gilbert has today called for a tactical vote against the Liberal Democrats because of their dangerous defence policy. There are plenty of people who will be voting for anyone but Labour. Widespread tactical voting on Thursday is much more likely to damage Labour as the incumbent governing party.

Fourth, it turns huge areas of the country into Labour ‘no-go’ areas. It is clear from the eccentric outburst from Manish Sood, Labour candidate in North West Norfolk (and councillor in Leicester), that this particular CLP had trouble finding a suitable PPC. Yet this is no true-blue seat. In 1997, Labour won North West Norfolk. In many parts of the country, local Labour Parties are reduced to a tiny handful of dedicated supporters, who cannot find enough people to stand as council candidates or even parliamentary candidates. Imagine what would happen if tactical voting was widespread. Labour would be eradicated in these seats, and cease to be a national party. Tactical voting takes us on the road to extinction.

Fifth, the point of Labour becoming a national party after 1906, and not a ginger group within the Liberal Party, or a trade union pressure group, was that we are a party with a core set of values and beliefs which are both distinct from, and superior to, those of other parties. Our great cause is to persuade people of our case no matter where they live. The party was build on the techniques of propaganda, campaigning, and activism. In the early part of the century there were few natural ‘Labour areas’. They were won one by one.

As the Labour candidate in 2001 in Lewes in East Sussex, there was nothing more frustrating and heart-breaking for me to hear people say “we’re Labour, but we’re voting Liberal Democrat”. They got Norman Baker as their MP, an active, effective and implacable enemy of the Labour Party. At least there were not Cabinet Ministers then further undermining the campaigners in seats like Lewes by giving the green light to switchers away from Labour. In that election Labour ministers saw their job as winning votes for Labour, not encouraging people to vote for the Liberal Democrats.

This election, I shall be voting in Eastbourne, a Lib Dem target seat. A few hundred switchers from Labour to Lib Dem will remove the nasty Tory MP and install Stephen Lloyd, the decent local Lib Dem candidate as MP. But nothing, not even Comrade Balls, can persuade me that I should vote for any party other than the one that reflects my values and politics, and that’s the Labour Party.

On Thursday, no matter where you live, I suggest you ignore the siren voices and do the same.