Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, author and historian Timothy Garton Ash delivers a passionate call for public to ignore any thought of tactical voting, and vote Lib Dem today to compel the real change Britain needs. Here’s an excerpt:
This time, vote Liberal Democrat. Vote Liberal wherever you can. Vote Liberal as if your life depended on it. Vote Liberal if you want a transformed politics and a modern, free country with a realistic view of its place in the world. No matter if you didn’t last time; no matter if you won’t next time. This time: seize the chance. Take the risk. I say this as someone who has never belonged to any political party and who, as an independent writer, intends to keep it that way. …
… the Liberal Democrats are pivotal. It’s not the detail of their policies, nor their leader, although he’s pretty good too. It’s because they are the third party and, under our current system, putting a third party into the kingmaker position is the only way we’re going to change that system. …
The choice, in other words, is between this being just another election and it being the election to change all elections. Vote Lib Dem this time – and you can make Thursday 6 May 2010 a historic turning point, equipping Britain to face the world that we are already in. Yes we can.
Please do take a moment to read his article in full. And then go and vote Lib Dem if you haven’t already!
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10 Comments
Do you have a link for that?
An excellent piece. Wish more had written similar clear, inspiring articles. Hope it has some effect.
Don’t listen to Timothy Garton Ash.
Don’t vote Liberal Democrat and put in a position of the balance of power a party that wishes to lose our country into a country called Europe and to lose the Pound and replace it with the Euro, an EU-fanatic policy of the Liberal Democrats which would have been utterly disastrous in recent years and would have put us in the same position as Greece.
Do Vote Labour and make sure that we get electoral reform with the Single Transferable Vote in existing Single member consituencies (STVS aka “AV” OR “IRV” to some). That is the biggest practical change of all, which makes every vote count, ends safe seats for rotten MPs and keeps the link between MPs and their constituencies – constituencies and links which MPs would not easily be persuaded to give away.
And, as David Aaronovitch wrote in The Times today: “I think that the country needs a Labour Party that can still be the best hope for social justice at home and progress abroad. I don’t want to see that party, as seems possible, humililated tonight. So I’ll be voting Labour”. I agree.
Labour the best hope for social justice ! dont make me larf.
They have had 13 years throwing crumbs to the poor, ‘content with more people getting fabulously rich’
And STV – If labour got back , that promise would melt faster than a snowball in hell.
simonsez: hear! hear!
“simonsez” and Paul McKeown,
Think what it would have been like with thirteen years of Conservative government, dismantling the welfare state!.
There is nothing wrong with people creating or earning great wealth – footballers, business people, pop stars, etc – but you can tax them fairly and you can and should stop them inheriting great fortunes while others inherit nothing. If the Liberal Democrats want to abolish Baby Bonds and Child Trust Funds, they should replace them with (or supplement them with) British Universal Inheritance, already the party policy of the EU-sceptic Liberal Party, financed by radical reform of the taxation of the transfer of wealth from each generation to the next. Labour or Liberal “Popular Capitalism” instead of Conservative unbridled “Dynastic Capitalism”.
I am quite sure that Labour would keep their promise of a referendum on STVS (“AV”) – Single member constituencies – but not at all sure that all Labour MPs would support STVS (“AV”) in that referendum. I hope and believe that Labour MPs would not support a referendum on STVM (“STV”) – Multi-member constituencies – but then that is not what they promised.
Will STV be better than the current system with regard to safe seats?
“Voter”
STVM (“STV”) will be better than the current system with regard to safe seats, but still could produce rock solid safe seats for parties in some areas, although not for individual rotten MPs.
STVS (“AV”) would not produce safe seats either for parties or for individual MPs.
Been suggesting that strategy to people for a while now – and quite a few people have suggested it to me too.
Just hope the LibDems will not settle for AV, AV+ or a party list system.
Thanks for that Dane.
Does it not, however, depend on human nature and campaigning?
A system which depends on X factor being present in human nature is naturally going to fail if X is not present.
I think we need to evaluate systems in practice as well as on paper.
The banking system was okay if the bankers could rationally see into the future. However, the bankers were not that rational. So the system fell to pieces.
What country could be cited with regard to its use of STV (or other system) which is a success in terms of a safe-seats test? How do you measure it?