General Election 2019:: Post #10: Almost there and this is what I'm going to do tomorrow.

I support Labour. I support Labour because even if I lie in bed at night fretting about that lump in my groin, that twinge of pain in my leg or that constant urge to pee, I don’t have to worry that, if there is something wrong and I do need medical treatment, then I will not have to face financial ruin as well as the trauma of illness. I support Labour because I know that I can rely on them to fight until the last breath in their body for the right of the NHS to remain free from privatisation and safe from the rapacious depredations of American health corporations.

I support Labour because I know that they will never cease in their efforts to ensure that prescriptions remain affordable. I support a party that works to make sure that no one in my family will ever know the stress of some of my American friends, who constantly have to worry whether they can afford their medications. I support Labour because they will strive ceaselessly to prevent medicine poverty, where people have to choose whether they eat or warm their homes, or whether they buy the medications that they depend upon to remain well or to get better.

I support Labour because they want a UK that is open to the world. They seek a UK of tolerance, of kindness, a UK that welcomes people from Europe and the rest of the world and tells them that they’ve come home. I support Labour because they campaign to support our EU citizen friends, relatives, neighbours and colleagues.  I support Labour because they fight against an oppressive Home Office that demonises and criminalises our neighbours, our workmates, our friends, our family, and rips them away from their UK home to cart them off to detention centres before deporting them to far off lands. I support Labour because they stand in solidarity with migrants, with asylum seekers, with the vulnerable. I support Labour because they understand that the best thing, the only thing, that we should tell someone fleeing war or oppression is “Welcome to the UK. Welcome home". I support Labour because they  support those values which mark the best of us.

I support Labour because they fight for our human and civil rights against an uncaring Conservative government that demonises the poor and blames the sick and disabled for their own poverty. I support Labour because they share my disgust and horror at a Westminster that casually tosses our young onto the streets. I support Labour because they understand that a society can only function as a cohesive whole when it looks after those who are least able to look after themselves, that it treats them with compassion and love. Walk past that young woman begging on the street and remember, there but for the grace of a pay cheque go I. I support Labour because she knows that if we do not support those who are unable to support themselves, there will be no one to look after us when we suffer the same problems. I support Labour because they oppose and condemns austerity.

I support Labour because they will fight tooth and nail to defend my human and employment rights. The Tories seek to remove us from the EU in order to trash those rights, to make the UK a paradise for corporations offering zero hours contracts, with no workers’ rights, no holiday or sick pay. I support Labour because they stand against that and resist it with every fibre of their being.

I support Labour because they oppose the obscenity of weapons of mass destruction. I support Labour because they have no truck with the nuclear viagra of a faded empire, because they support a UK that walks in peace.

I support Labour because they are pro-peace and anti-privatisation.

I support Labour because their values and social aspirations reflect mine.

I am a tribal, visceral Labourite. And, in all bar a couple of elections when I've voted tactically, I have always voted Labour. However, this General Election is different. The imperative is to reduce the numbers of Tory MPs wherever possible. With this in mind, and notwithstanding my Labour roots, I'll be going into the polling booth tomorrow to vote with my head rather than my heart. In our constituency (North Cornwall), Labour, and how I wish it were otherwise as the candidate, Joy Bassett, is really good, will not come anywhere near mounting a serious challenge on the Tory incumbent. The Liberal Democrat candidate, Danny Chambers, stands a reasonable chance. I've heard him speak and, putting his first-time election naivety to one side, his heart and world experiences are in the right place. Luckily I am able to assuage my conscience by swapping my vote with a Lib Dem friend in a Labour marginal seat up north and so, holding my nose at the time, I will be putting a X against Danny Chamber's name on Thursday.

And what about Jeremy Corbyn? Leadership matters. Leadership is essential. The Labour Party needs a leader with energy, authority and imagination. Jezza isn't the one and my opinion of him (see my post of 22nd August 2018) has remained unchanged over the run-up to this election. Given the Tories abysmal record and the prospect of another Boris administration, a Labour victory was there for the taking, but not with Jezza at the helm. The policies are right but the 'leader' isn't. But if not Jezza, who? And that's where it becomes very difficult: who indeed? Watch this space as Labour implodes over the next few months.