I’m a Tory – here’s why I’m voting Labour in the local elections
In a time of messy, multi-party politics, tactical voting is likely to define contests in next week’s local elections. Alys Denby is not prepared to let the Green Party take control of her bin collection
I’m about to do something against which all my instincts recoil, something so shameful I hesitate to admit in this newspaper. I am going to vote Labour.
Being a Conservative in south east London has long felt like a lost cause but I do not believe it has to be this way. London is the engine of the national economy – there are plenty of voters here who want politicians to believe in freedom, personal responsibility and the moral necessity of capitalism. But that is not what is on offer at the upcoming local elections.
Polls suggest that Labour will hold my local council, Southwark, but that neighbouring Lewisham and Lambeth could fall to the Greens. Central office is clearly worried as Angela Rayner was dispatched to Rye Lane last weekend to shed some stardust on the campaign. Current projections show Labour winning a 34 per cent vote share and the Greens 31 per cent. That’s not a risk I’m prepared to take.
Southwark is not especially well run, though my councillor was responsive when I asked for help removing antisemitic graffiti from a local playground – itself a symptom of the decline of this great city under Labour. It has stalled approval of the redevelopment of a grotty shopping centre to provide around 800 new homes following opposition from activists and insufferable left-wing comedians. But the Greens would be so much worse.
The Southwark Green Party’s manifesto says they will “demand that property developers build at least 35 per cent genuinely affordable homes on all new developments and fight for rent controls in private rented housing”. This would be – to paraphrase Assar Lindbeck – the fastest way to destroy London’s housing market short of carpet bombing.
The insanity of rent controls
Developers have already given up on London, with just 4,170 new homes starting construction last year, a 72 per cent fall on the previous year. As a result, the government has intervened to overrule Sadiq Khan’s 35 per cent affordable housing target, but even the new 20 per cent quota is too high. You don’t make housing “affordable” by making it unviable to build – 20 per cent of nothing is still nothing. As for rent controls, these have failed everywhere they have been tried, but at a time when the supply of rental property is already plummeting as landlords sell up thanks to new renters’ rights legislation, they would be even more damaging.
Labour may not like landlords, but at least some of them recognise that rent controls are insane. The housing secretary this week dismissed Rachel Reeves’ hints that she may introduce a one-year freeze on private rents, noting that in Scotland “it ended up with rents going much higher”. That the Chancellor floated this self-harming idea reveals more about her political weakness than her understanding of the basics of supply and demand. She knows rent controls don’t work, but finding herself increasingly isolated in a party that’s drifting to the left, she pandered to a faction that’s fundamentally hostile to the profit motive. Thankfully she was vetoed in what is surely a prelude to her dismissal in a post-election reshuffle.
But back to the Greens, it’s not just their policies that are terrible – it’s their personalities too. The biographies of the candidates for Southwark council read like the classifieds section of the Socialist Worker. One boasts: “She helped push Southwark Council to declare a climate emergency” (one hopes Beijing, Delhi and Houston took note of the borough’s bold leadership). Another says: “They are passionate about plants and modern folk music. Their work has included teaching, nature conservation and helping establish housing co-operatives”. To her credit, one boasts of being an entrepreneur but she is a rarity – most others haven’t even worked in a productive sector of the economy.
I question the motives of those attracted to a party led by an obvious charlatan – or “snaggle-toothed tit-quack” as another CityAM columnist put it
I admire anyone who stands for elected office, but I question the motives of those attracted to a party led by an obvious charlatan – or “snaggle-toothed tit-quack” as another CityAM columnist put it. A former hypnotist, a former Lib Dem (which is more delusional?), his name’s not even Zack Polanski – it’s David Paulden. This man and his commune of extremists shouldn’t be in charge of a hole punch – let alone bin collection.
The dangers of tactical voting
So if voting Labour is what it will take to keep these con artists from power, then that is what I must do next week. And I expect I won’t be alone. As Merlin Strategy’s Scarlett Maguire has written in CityAM, we are living in a time of “messy multi-party politics” and should expect tactical voting to influence results in multiple constituencies at the next general election. That makes the outcome much harder to predict – but it could also make the country’s problems harder to fix.
Tactical voting turns elections from an expression of preference into an exercise in prevention. Instead of backing the party whose platform you genuinely support, you vote for the one most likely to stop someone else from winning.
That matters because democracy is supposed to provide a clear link between what voters want and what politicians deliver. If large numbers of people feel compelled to vote tactically, the signals they send with their ballots become scrambled.
Politicians elected on the basis of being the lesser of two evils – in contests that play out in ways highly specific to their area – are unlikely to deliver the change Britain so badly needs. We will end up with a chaotic coalition with competing agendas instead of a reforming government with a clear plan. Elections should be battles of ideas, not risk assessments.
If my personal politics have become so distorted that, as a card-carrying Tory and a professional fan of free markets, I’m planning to vote for the enemy, what does that mean for the country? We’ll find out on 8 May, comrades.
Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of CityAM