My heart soared when I first heard the phrase ‘progressive alliance’ in this election campaign. Not the reaction you’d expect, perhaps, but any attempt to persuade people to vote tactically on the eve of a general election is doomed to failure. A complete waste of time. I should know because I tried to get a similar venture off the ground three years ago.
Mine was a conservative version, obviously. In 2014 I was worried that the split on the right would enable Ed Miliband to become our next prime minister. So I launched a Unite the Right campaign and set about trying to persuade supporters of Ukip and the Tories to vote for which-ever candidate in their constituency was best placed to defeat the Labour candidate. Our slogan was ‘Country Before Party’.
It quickly became apparent that the leaders of both parties wanted nothing to do with it. Not only would it have meant persuading some already selected candidates to stand down, but the negative effect of entering into an electoral pact would have outweighed the gains. In other words, each party calculated that an alliance with the other would be regarded as so toxic by many of its supporters — particularly its activists — that it would put off more voters than it would attract. And that is exactly why the leaders of the Labour Party and the Lib Dems have categorically ruled out any sort of alliance in this campaign. Jeremy Corbyn knows that his hard left supporters would be scandalised by a link up with the Lib Dems, while Tim Farron knows he won’t have a hope of winning back swing voters in the south-west if he gets into bed with Labour.
Not that I gave up at this point.
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