On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, John B wrote:

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.

Boris Johnson 0, Liverpool 1.

It depends on what sort of "left-wing" you are. That's precisely the
voting strategy I'm going to use,

Me too!

(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)

Do you think? I reckon that as long as the proper-socialist or whatever
vote is small enough that it doesn't threaten Ken's position in the top
two, Labour knows that they'll still pick up the second-preference votes
anyway, and don't need to worry. That's why Brian is a good left-wing
protest vote: he's got more of a chance of getting into the top two, at
which point he becomes something that Labour really do have to worry
about.

tom

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