On 16 Apr, 14:37, (Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:
(John B) wrote:
[I assume the reason for Gilligan's hatchet-job is primarily that he's
worried people will vote for left-wing parties first and Ken second to
punish Labour while keeping Boris out. In fact, this is still a Very
Sensible Thing To Do if you're left-wing and dislike current Labour
policies, but don't want a right-wing buffoon in power...]

A possibly more effective tactic from that position would be Brian
Paddick 1, Ken Livingstone 2.

It depends on what sort of "left-wing" you are. That's precisely the
voting strategy I'm going to use, since I'm a free-market liberal, but
if someone is actually a socialist then voting for one of the
socialist parties as first choice is worth doing.

(there's no point in voting BNP as a working-class protest, since
that'll be taken as "I'm a bigot who wants to kick out the darkies"
even if - as I think it is in many areas where they've been successful
- it really means "I'm working-class and poor and fed up with being
completely ignored by the three middle-class mainstream parties". But
if the combined proper-socialist vote were to reach 10%, that's the
point where Labour would start worrying it could no longer bank on
working class support)

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org