Ayesha Hazarika’s advice in her Evening Standard column echoes what many political commentators have suggested.
From their point of view neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Boris Johnson are suitable prime ministers. But one of them is going to win, so you have to choose the one you least dislike.
I am not convinced.
For nearly forty years I abstained in every election because I did not think it made a difference. When New Labour was born, I felt my abstention had been vindicated. Here was a leader, Tony Blair, who was so similar to the Tories you could not separated them with a cigarette paper.
But then came theEU referendum. I was back. Here was a vote in which my vote counted. I could make a difference. The choice was simple – Leave or Remain – and whichever side won, their decision would be implemented. So I voted to Leave.
How naive I seem now.I was wrong. The most basic student of Marxism could have told me why. There is a reason why they call it the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They don’t need jackboots and detention camps to exercise their power. They do not need to scrap parliament and dismantle the facade of democratic control. When you hold all the levers of power, the facde of a democratic referendum is an obstacle you can overcome.
So the machine rolled into action. For three years we heard an almost constant refrain of how we had got it wrong. First we were stupid or ignorant. Initially they reassured us they would still respect our decision. Every political discussion started with “Of course we respect the result of the referendum, but…” In the immediate aftermath of the biggest democratic kicking the ruling class have received since the 1945 election, it could have provoked a revolution (what they like to refer to as civil disorder) if they had simply slapped the working class electorate in the face at that point.
So they do what they know best. Kick it into the long grass. Delay. Shilly-shally. Drag it out in the hope the public would lose interest. And start the high-powered propaganda campaign to overturn the result.
The first prong of the attack was that we did not know what we voted for. Hard Brexit? Soft Brexit? But our self-appointed leaders of public opinion would sort it out for us. Every variation of Brexit was discussed, with a constant refrain in the background saying – see, it is more complicated than you thought.
After a year or so they moved to stage two of the campaign – the call for a ‘second referendum’. Of course that would be complicated too. We would need a three-way vote. Remain, Leave outright or accept some compromise deal. Keeping Leave on the ballot paper was a reluctant concession. But they still lacked the confidence to declare their intention to ignore our vote.
Finally after a three year war of attrition, the second referendum or People’s Vote morphed into a confirmatory referendum. The difference between the terminology is important. The crucial difference between a second referendum and a confirmatory vote is the disappearance of the Just Leave option. A confirmatory vote is a choice between staying in the EU and whatever deal the government of the day has negotiated. The option to Leave outright has just been dropped. Maybe they thought we would not notice.
This ‘confirmatory referendum’ was originally mooted when the deal on offer was Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement a deal which was almost universally rejected. So a confirmatory referendum at that point seemed an easy win for the ruling class’s preferred option – Remain. This has been complicated somewhat by the new Tory PM’s deal, which has a better chance of winning in a second vote.
The general election has been presented as a kind of second referendum. Giving the Tories a majority makes the Boris deal a shoe-in. Giving Labour a majority makes a confirmatory vote a shoe-in. And Labour have volunteered to load the dice even more heavily in favour of Remain by saying they will renegotiate a withdrawal agreement which will so closely resemble the Remain option as to make voting for it an almost pointless exercise.
But framing the general election as a second referendum is complicated. A general election is never a single issue decision – it cannot simply be about Brexit. The election also determines the economic and social policy of the next government. That is why Ms Hazarika and others want us to hold our noses and vote Labour.
They want both left wing Leave voters and left wing Corbyn haters to vote Labour – a Remain party in all but name – to keep out the Tories.
My answer to Hazarika and Co. is this. I came out of political abstentionism to participate in this farce. And Leave won. If your party cannot implement that decision then your party does not deserve my vote.
I am not going to ‘hold my nose’ and vote for a party that stinks. I would rather not vote than give my support to a political process that demonstrates its contempt for the democratic decision of the working class.