Labour/Conservative/Lib Dem/Delete As Appropriate, Through Thick and Thin.

Whilst the opinion polls are pretty disastrous for Labour – and by pretty disastrous I mean the very worst in history – what does still surprise me is that some people will still vote Labour. They still have support that is in the double figures. I mean, what would they have to do to lose that bedrock of support? Burn effigies of Princess Diana in Parliament Square? Feast on the taxpayers’ babies? Invade Glasgow and raze it to the ground? At what point does even the most die-hard Labour supporter go “you know what, they aren’t the party they used to be”? Would the Labour government actually have to openly and brazenly declare war on its own people for their support to drop down to single digits? Would it actually take Ed Balls punching school kids in the face before the nation turns its back on this utterly compellingly discredited and utterly compromised government?

But it isn’t just Labour who can count on a small army of zombies to put their cross in their box at elections. The Tories had legions of people with countryside accents and blue rinses to vote for them in 1997 – when being Tory was a bit like having a contagious skin complaint. And likewise, the Lib Dems have their diehard band of bearded geography teachers and indecisive middle class types to march out for them every time the ballot opens. Even now, when the expenses scandal has shown just how on the take our politicians can be, the parties can sleep easy knowing that people will still vote for them come Thursday. All the parties have a diehard core who will vote for them no matter what.

And a lot of that support is unthinking. You hear the phrase every now and again – “oh, I’ve voted Tory all my life.” Really? So you voted for Edward Heath – and man history will show to have been on the left of Tony Blair – and for Margaret Thatcher? For William Hague, and now you’re planning on voting for Hug A Husky Cameron? Really? You think that makes sense? Or are your political opinions just all over the place? Because Heath’s Tory party isn’t even recognizable now, after Cameron had expended a lot of energy in dragging the Tories back to the One Nation era. There is an alternative, of course. You always vote Tory because it isn’t an intellectual thing – it is an unthinking instinct.

You can do the same thing with people who claim to have always voted Labour, because you can’t claim that the Labour Party of 1983 is the same as the Labour Party of 1997. The latter is pretty much the Tory Party of today. If you voted Labour in 1997, you probably should vote Tory at the next election. There really is fuck all difference – Labour at the time were unbelievably right-wing. But no. There will be some who will just vote Labour. Because they always have done, and always will do.

It is a challenge I always throw down to die hard supporters of all the main parties – what would it take for you to not vote for that party? What would the Tories have to do to lose the blue rinse brigade? What would Labour have to do to lose the unionists? Because throughout their histories all those parties seem to have had good goes at alienating even the most loyal of supporters, but have never quite managed it. And the argument that “even a bad Labour party is better than any Tory government” or vice versa is just as mindless – as any socialist who witnessed Tony Blair’s years in power should be able to attest to.

You can vote for whoever you want, and for whatever reason. So yeah, you can vote Tory because you always have done. You can vote Labour because your parents did. And so on. But this is your vote. It is your tiny say in who governs this country. And don’t you think that it deserves slightly more thought than the sort of tribal loyalty that people give football teams?

It would be interesting to break down the figures and see why that rump of supporters who haven’t abandoned Labour in what may yet be some of their worst days are still sticking with them. I’d imagine the reason for the majority would be “well, I’ve always been a Labour supporter…”