I have been looking at several left-wing websites, hoping to find a rationale for the position I have decided to take. And I do not see it.
They all want me to vote Labour. Some say put them in power to demonstrate to the working class they are not truly socialist. The argument goes that Corbyn and McDonnell will talk the good fight, claiming to be radical socialists, until they are put on the spot. Others seem to be taken in by the left-wing credentials of Corbyn, and see him as a genuine left-wing alternative to the status quo. And others, more desperately, cling to the argument that failing to vote for Corbyn is tantamount to voting for another 5 years of Tory austerity.
I am sorry, but I do not buy it.
Maybe I overestimate the working class. But if the last 3 years have achieved anything, it is to focus our minds on the contrast between what we vote for and what we get.
We can vote to Leave the EU. But what we get is a concerted campaign to overturn that decision. And the leadership of the Labour party has been complicit in that betrayal. Not just Starmer and Watson and Thornberry, but Corbyn too. And his erstwhile partner in arms, McDonnell, has made the most enthusiastic volte face of all.
If Corbyn was a principled socialist, he would have stuck to his guns and argued openly for the Labour Party to campaign against the EU. Like the parliamentary manoeuvrer he is, Corbyn weighed up the pros and cons of sticking to his principles, and decided he should jettison them. He chose to curry favour with the anti-Brexit membership of his party. Campaigning against them would have jeopardised his position as leader. So he went with the flow.
My first instinct, when the election was announced, was to abstain. There is no party standing which represents my position. So there is no party that gets my vote.
I think this is a position which is shared by millions of workers across the country. We want to support a party that would implement the type of policies the Labour Party claims to support. But we do not trust Corbyn to put those policies into practice.
If, after decades of anti-EU activism, he caves under the pressure of the last three years, what hope is there that he will implement genuine anti-capitalist policies?
So I will abstain.
Until there is a party in which I can place my trust, nobody gets my vote.