Get the Tories out!
We have a general election tomorrow (4th July); it may be today by the time you read this. We have had 14 years of Tory mismanagement, five of them enabled by the Liberal Democrats, during which we relinquished our membership of the European Union, experienced an unnecessary austerity in which the fabric of our society was destroyed and poor and disabled people made scapegoats, saw the rise of grinding poverty that resulted in food banks rising from almost unknown to a fixture in every city and town, and witnessed our government party as the rest of the nation spent Christmas alone or isolated with their families following the second wave of Covid in late 2020. We are seeing schools persecute children over trivial uniform infractions and for forgetting pens and pencils while the buildings themselves are falling down. Large parts of our towns and cities stink of sewage. You can travel miles and not escape it in some areas.
Tomorrow, we really must vote for whoever is best placed to get these people out. Some of us have the privilege of sufficient numbers to elect an independent or third-party candidate but for many it means voting Labour or Lib Dem. If for no other reason than the Tories’ threat to reintroduce “national service”, we must get them out: if you have a teenager in your family, a boy or a girl, know that the Tories will pick a fight with the Russians if re-elected — recent stories and opinion pieces in Tory newspapers point in that direction — and they will demand that our young people fight the battle for them. More immediately, our schools will continue to inflict Michael Gove’s Gradgrindesque curriculum on our children, and our health system will move further towards using underqualified ‘associates’ as if they were doctors. Our social care, dentistry and mental health systems are in crisis and this will continue if we have another four or five years of Rishi Sunak and his contemptuous cronies.
Of course, many Muslims are angry that Labour has not stood up for the people of Gaza during the genocide, and that some of its MPs are under the sway of pro-Israel lobbying. The Tories, however, are actively hostile to Muslims. Despite boasting of the most diverse front bench ever, it has not included any practising Muslims. With Gove in government (he is not standing for re-election, but he will remain a major influence if his acolytes are in parliament), good schools have been demonised and destroyed for accommodating their Muslim pupils too much (have we forgotten the “Trojan Horse” hoax?) while another is celebrated for preventing Muslim pupils from praying. The Tories also banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir for holding demonstrations calling on Muslim countries to defend the people of Gaza.
People familiar with the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign will know that they advocate targeted boycotts, not emotional scattergun boycotts: the boycotts are targeted at a small group of companies actively involved in the occupation rather than any company which does any business in Israel. We should aim our voting efforts the same way: by voting for strong independent and third-party candidates who have a chance of winning in order to unseat the most egregious pro-Israel MPs, but not (at the opposite extreme) by refusing to vote for dissenting Labour MPs who have stood against the genocide, such as John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. The Muslim Vote campaign has given in to loudmouths and withdrawn their support for these two and other pro-Palestine Labour MPs. This is a huge mistake that benefits neither the Muslims of this country nor the people of Gaza. I have seen many Muslims say they will vote Green; anyone tempted to do this should look at their candidate’s policy on halal slaughter, which some Green politicians have gone on record as supporting a ban on. Nobody with this policy should get any Muslim’s vote.
So, if Faiza Shaheen or Jeremy Corbyn is standing in your constituency then by all means vote for them. But don’t waste your vote on a candidate that can’t win if there’s a chance that it could leave you with a Tory MP and don’t waste it on a media junkie or self-promoter either, especially one who is close to the equally vicious Asad regime. We must save our country from another five years or ruinous Tory rule.
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