Don’t Just Vote Tactically – Vote Strategically!

The revolutionary act of voting

Our ancestors fought and died for the right to vote. It may not seem like much to be "allowed" to put a mark against a name on a piece of paper every 5 years or so, but it is potentially one of the most revolutionary things any one person can do.

voting 'strategically' and not just 'tactically'

‘Tactical’ voting is about holding your nose as you tick the box on the ballot paper for a candidate you don’t like. It’s about voting for a candidate who is at least less ‘bad’ than the other candidate - who is even worse! If you are lucky, tactical voting is about voting for a candidate who might actually win, as opposed to voting for someone who has no chance at all of winning (even though you really like that candidate, or that party, or their particular policy on something)…

‘Strategic’ voting may very well involve voting for the same candidate as would a tactical voter. But it involves a different mindset. Strategy is about taking the long view. It is about winning the ‘war’, even if that means losing some of the ‘battles’ along the way. Strategy requires a thorough understanding of what you are up against and how to play the game.

What we are up against in the UK is a system which is hugely stacked in favour of the status quo. We have a mass media which pumps out day after day, week after week, whatever it takes to convince people that ‘there is no alternative’ to the system we’ve got. We have an education system which churns out a certain breed of politician, particularly from certain schools and certain universities, who knows in great detail how to advance his or her own career on the back of a ‘common’ agenda that maintains and strengthens that system. We have political parties which choose and manage and control what those politicians can say and do. And we have a voting system which gives most voters little or no choice other than to support the existing system when it comes to election day.

That does not mean change is impossible – change does happen. But if we want real change, we have to be strategic.

Being ‘allowed’ to vote for whoever we want on election day seems like a good enough idea. We get to choose which party we like best and it feels like real democracy. But is that real ‘choice’ or is it an illusion?

Don't throw away your vote!

I can vote for the Monster Raving Loony candidate if I want to, but that person will never get elected to parliament and that party will never form a government. So, in effect, by voting Raving Monster Loony Party, I am throwing my vote away. I might as well not vote at all because it would amount to the same thing. By voting Raving Monster Loony Party, or by not voting at all, I am in effect giving my vote to whichever party is already the strongest in my constituency.

Voting strategically means recognising that, in most constituencies, I am doing the same thing if I vote Green, or Plaid Cymru, or TUSC – or even, in some cases, if I vote Labour!

Voting Green can make you feel good. It can make you feel like you are in control, voting for real change, voting with your whole being, making a powerful statement about your priorities and your beliefs. But the effect is the same as if you had voted Raving Monster Loony, since the Green candidate, in most cases, will never get elected to parliament and the Green Party will never form a government. Therefore, what you are actually doing by voting Green is to give your vote to whichever party is already the strongest (unless you live in Brighton Pavilion, that is, in which case, voting Green is the best option you have!).

In the 2017 election, the Tories lost their overall majority and have governed for the past two years because of just 8 seats, which could so easily have gone the other way at that election. The majorities they had in each of those 8 seats was tiny: they won by 27 votes in Gower and 41 votes in Derby North, for instance. The Green vote in 3 of those seats was larger than the Tory majority: in Gower, 1,161 people voted Green and in Derby North it was 1,618. If just 28 of those Green voters in Gower had voted Labour instead of Green, they would now have a Labour MP instead of a Tory MP in that constituency. Ditto in Derby North and ditto in at least nine other constituencies where the Tories won by margins smaller than the Green vote in that constituency.

The uncomfortable truth for Green voters is that in the 2015 election, voting Green actually gave us the Tory government we have today. Now, you can argue that in 2015, the Labour Party was hardly distinguishable from the Tory Party, and that getting a Tory government was no worse than getting a Labour government. You can also argue that, in the long run, unless people start voting Green at some point, we will never get a Green government, so we have to start somewhere.

From a strategic point of view, however, we need to recognise voting, and political parties, and the whole political system for what it really is: a façade of democracy designed to maintain, at all costs, the status quo. By voting for whoever we like, we are simply playing a game that has been set up to maintain the system and actually works very well at doing just that.

But the game of democracy has one major flaw, which can be, and has been, successfully exploited from time to time throughout history to make real change. When people actually band together and unite in a common cause, they are stronger and more numerous than anything the system can throw back at them! Dictators are toppled and systems are overthrown when people realise that what unites them is more than what divides them.

The Labour Party swept into power in 1945 and utterly transformed this country. They were able to do that because a large majority of people in this country wanted change, and they all joined together as one political force to make that happen. Real change on that kind of scale cannot happen any other way.

Voting strategically means voting together! It means working with, and through, a single political party to raise all the different issues and concerns that matter to people, rather than trying to battle it out with each other at the polls. The present Labour Party, under Jeremy Corbyn, for instance, has more chance of advancing the Green agenda in this country than the Green Party has ever had, so why not work within the Labour Party to make that happen?

The Labour Party, since 1945 and especially since 1997, has sadly been a great disappointment to many, many people. It has been coopted by the system and become part of that very system it was created to fight against. That’s how powerful the system is.

But we are now in a new era. Jeremy Corbyn has begun a transformation within the Labour Party which is already making it once again the party of the people and the party of change. With more than 600,000 members, the vast majority of whom are committed to this transformation, the Labour Party is already set on a new course and will continue that path, with or without Jeremy Corbyn at the helm.

Voting strategically means recognising that only by voting together, as one party, can we overcome the powerful forces that are working day in and day out to keep things as they are. Yes, in certain constituencies, it is also strategic (and tactical) to vote for a party other than Labour in order to get a Labour government elected. That is also part of the reality we live in. But that is not the same as just voting for ‘whoever’ is most likely to beat the Tories.

In 621 out of 650 constituencies, voting strategically on 8th June means voting Labour. The remaining 29 constituencies include the whole of Northern Ireland, where the Labour Party does not stand any candidates. They include 8 seats in Scotland where voting Labour instead of SNP elects a LibDem or Tory MP. They include two seats in Wales where voting Labour instead of Plaid Cymru does the same thing. And they include the one seat which the Greens currently have.

When it comes to the LibDems, voting strategically, rather than tactically, means recognising that the LibDems are more likely to prop up a minority Tory government, as they have in the recent past, than to prop up a minority Labour government. Given the system that we have, there may no alternative to these two parties in some cases. But voting LibDem just because they may be stronger than Labour in that constituency is not going to get us a Labour government. It may be tactical to do so, but it is not being strategic…

To check what voting strategically means in your constituency, check the constituency pages at www.votetosurvive.org.uk.