It is now all but certain that the election in two weeks will end up giving Britain another hung parliament Thanks to the rise of the SNP, Labour will be denied a majority, and there are no signs that the Tories will be able to make up the 7% lead they need to gain one. Sam Fawcett argues why he believes that people shouldn’t vote Lib Dem even ‘tactically’ in Somerset.
Analysts predict that Ed Miliband is by far the most likely man to become the UK’s next Prime Minister. However, have no doubts that the Tories will seek to use every tool they have to undermine and try and bring down a Labour government.
We have already seen plenty of this in the past two weeks with David Cameron’s shameful attempts to portray a SNP-Labour deal as a grave threat to the nation. Despite the fact that Ed Miliband has repeatedly ruled this out, Cameron and his friends in the media keep repeating this line, undermining the Union the Conservatives claim to care so deeply about as well as refusing to rule out a ‘coalition of chaos’ of their very own with UKIP.
Obviously, in the event of Labour winning the most seats and refusing to enter a coalition with the SNP, this attack line will lose its potency. Instead, the Tories will focus all their efforts on attacking the legitimacy of a Labour government. They will claim that a Labour minority government will not have a mandate to govern radically, especially if the Tories win most votes but Labour most seats – a possible scenario.
This is why it is crucial that on May 7 progressive voters in Somerset do not grit their teeth and vote Lib Dem.
Not only has the party not ruled out another coalition with the Tories, presided over some of the worst acts of the previous government and looks set to collapse in the South West, but every vote Labour received will help counter this narrative. While we may not be able to win many seats in Somerset, we can add to the overall national vote share, and this could well be crucial in the febrile atmosphere that will follow this general election.
At the election before last I voted Lib-Dem in the hope the we could unseat Ian Liddell Grainger but it still made no difference. At that election, and again in 2010, more votes were cast against him than for him. The fact that the Lib-Dems have been in cahoots with the tories since 2010 ensures that I will NEVER vote for anyone but Labour again. Hopefully, those who voted Lib-Dem in 2010 will see sense and vote Labour this time to see off this lazy incompetent, who is simply cannon fodder for the right wing extremism of camoron and his cronies. He has voted in favour of every vile policy that this lousy government has introduced and for that alone he needs to be kicked out.