It’s naive for Labour activists to encourage people to vote tactically for other parties

It is good to see the vast majority of Labour members focussed on campaigning in key marginal seats and promoting the positive policies being announced nationally.

However, we are already beginning to see some of the same nonsense we saw in the run-up to 2010 with calls for tactical voting for the Lib Dems and Greens.

The “Compass” group started out well over a decade ago as an inside-the-Labour Party “soft left” faction or think tank, filling the gap between the Bennite hard left and the Brownites and Blairites. Over time it seems to have become obsessed with reaching out to forces outside Labour through promotion of tactical voting and constitutional reform, culminating in a decision to open its own membership to Greens, Lib Dems and other non-Labour members, which led to a spilt and most of its young members walking away.

Yet again Compass is hosting a discussion on the merits of tactical voting. They see encouraging people to vote for the perceived main opponent to the Tories in any given seat as a way of mobilising an imaginary “progressive majority”. This same ridiculous debate has undermined Labour’s campaign and reduced Labour’s vote in every General Election since 1983.

Compass and other proponents of tactical voting have obviously learned nothing from 2010 when the Lib Dems took tactical votes from Labour and then went into a pro-austerity coalition with the Tories – hardly the actions of a party that could form part of a “progressive majority”. Often those tactical votes were obtained by statistically dodgy bar charts on Lib Dem Focus leaflets which presented themselves as the main challenger and thus created a self-fulfilling prophesy. The same Lib Dems who benefited from tactically squeezing Labour in some mainly rural constituencies were, far from seeing themselves as part of a “progressive majority”, simultaneously promoting themselves in other, mainly urban constituencies, as the main anti-Labour force and tactically squeezing the Tory vote.

It is important to note that as well as the impact of this on squeezing the Labour vote in many seats, the precedent of 2010 is that there is national consequence to tactical voting. Winning the popular vote nationally is used by the Lib Dems as a benchmark in coalition talks in a hung parliament. They say they will go into power with the party with the highest aggregate vote nationally. So on the one hand they are asking Labour supporters to tactically lend them votes in many seats, then when this depresses Labour’s national total vote they ignore the tactical element and judge all the votes at face value, claiming all the votes lent to them tactically as part of their mandate, and judging Labour not on any ideological proximity but on a vote share they themselves reduced. In case there is a hung parliament, Labour therefore needs to maximise its vote even where we cannot win the seat, so that in any coalition negotiations we can claim a stronger national mandate than the Tories.

Given that the Lib Dems have been in a rightwing coalition with the Tories for five years and have even started prejudging the election by announcing which Labour policies, such as the cut in tuition fees, they will block in any negotiations, it is difficult to understand why any Labour people would contemplate advocating a tactical vote for them.

The case against tactical voting for the Greens is even stronger – the only seats where they are conclusively the main challenger are ones where they competing against Labour not the Tories, so tactical voting is irrelevant. Like the Lib Dems they have a track record in local government of joining anti-Labour coalitions with the Tories far more than they join “progressive coalitions” with Labour.

In any case tactical voting can only work if it is clear who the top two runners are in a given seat. The party system has changed so much since 2010 that in any seats other than Tory vs Labour straight fights trying to call this based on the 2010 results is ridiculous. A bar chart showing the Lib Dems second in 2010 is about as relevant to 2015 as the Bayeux Tapestry, given that nationally they have collapsed from 23% to about 6%, and UKIP, the Greens and SNP have burst on to the scene. Nor are Lord Ashcroft and Survation’s single constituency polls much use as opinion has jumped around so much from month to month and there are a number of genuine three and even four way fights.

There is nothing immoral about political parties calling for people to vote for them for tactical reasons to beat voters’ least preferred party, as opposed to making positive appeals based on their own merits. As a candidate I’ve written to Green and Lib Dem voters asking for their tactical support to beat the Tories. But if the Lib Dems want tactical votes they are quite capable of campaigning for them themselves. What’s perverse is people who consider themselves Labour members or even Labour activists encouraging people to vote for parties other than Labour based on a naive, and 2010 shows us daft, hope that those other parties might see us as allies.

If you are a Labour supporter, member or activist you have one job between now and 7th May which is to maximise Labour’s number of seats and number of votes. It isn’t your job to help boost any other party’s number of seats or votes. They won’t thank you for it, they’ll just bank the votes and past performance suggests gang up with the Tories. That Compass are still promoting this flawed concept despite its abject failure to create a “progressive majority” in 2010 would be laughable if it was not a serious threat to a Labour victory in such a close election.