Why I will be voting Labour

The rise of Corbyn appears to be the big surprise of this general election, so we have commissioned two blogs – one on either side – about this issue. Please feel free to join in the debate: those involved in Radix are voting in most conceivable directions, and both these blogs are written in a personal capacity.

Labour are a shambles, and Jeremy Corbyn is a terrible leader, who would probably be a disastrous PM. Yet I will be voting Labour on Thursday.

Why?

The reason is the Conservative government in general, and Theresa May in particular. This government will be defined by Brexit. Let us recap. Cameron called a referendum to appease people in his party. The vote was between Remain and a disparate bunch of possibilities loosely termed Brexit. There was no contingency plan if Remain lost. It did, the government fell apart and the part of the Tory party who won were too cowardly to take up the mantle and so we got May.

May’s main USP is that she is calm, strong and sensible. She keeps her cards close to her chest and doesn’t discuss her strategy. Unfortunately, it has become patently clear that she has no cards and no strategy. The Brexit vote has left Britain in a disastrously weak position in negotiating with Europe.

The whole process will take years of negotiation, where our government will be unable to work on proper issues that the British people might care about like jobs, schools and health because it’s too tied up with Brexit. And, at the end of the process, we will be worse off with no foreseeable gain. If May had any integrity, she would say sorry Britain, we made a mistake, we’re not doing Brexit.

Then there are her attempts at domestic policy. The dementia tax. After the terror attacks May said “enough is enough”. What this means is I don’t want there to be any more terror attacks but I don’t have any ideas on how to stop it. Just as in her years as home secretary she told us she was going to clamp down on immigration. But didn’t. She has no ideas. She has no clue.

If the Conservatives were heading for a large majority, or other parties were doing better, I would vote Green or Lib Dems because this is not a competent Labour party. A Labour coalition might very well pull out of Brexit, they would probably get a better deal as they would be a bit more humble, not go out to antagonise the EU to make cheap political gains and they would probably go for a more reasonable Brexit with free movement and free trade.

But my main reason for voting for them is that the Tories might lose. And I don’t want to just vote for them to lose the election, I want to vote for them to be put in care homes and made to sell their houses to pay for the care.

Because this current government are sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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Radix is the radical centre think tank. We welcome all contributions which promote system change, challenge established notions and re-imagine our societies. The views expressed here are those of the individual contributor and not necessarily shared by Radix.

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