The Last Chance for Democracy: Defying the Duopoly #GeneralElection2024

“I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.” — Eugene V. Debs

Ah, the fetid stench of this general election campaign week wafts across our benighted land. What a putrid offering it is, dear reader! We find ourselves once again at the precipice, staring into the abyss of political bankruptcy that masquerades as democracy in this sceptred isle.

On one side, we have the Conservatives – a shambling corpse of a party, animated solely by the dark magic of corporate greed and the lust for power. After 14 years of abject failure, they stumble on, leaving a trail of broken promises and shattered lives in their wake. And what of Labour, you ask? A sad pantomime of opposition, an empty vessel piloted by that Trilateralist stooge, Sir Keir Starmer. He’s the establishment’s puppet, a political Pinocchio whose strings are pulled by the very forces he claims to oppose.

But fear not, for in this wasteland of ideas, there are still seeds of hope. The Workers Party, TUSC, and a smattering of principled left-wing independents like Jeremy Corbyn, and Andrew Feinstein all offer a glimmer of an alternative. These are the voices crying out in the wilderness, still clinging to the quaint notion that politics should serve the many, not the privileged few.

Tony Benn, that prophet of the Left, warned us of this very scenario. He foresaw a Labour Party stripped of its socialist heart, reduced to a “harmless alternative” to the Tories. And lo, his words have come to pass. We stand now at the precipice of a far-right resurgence, as seen across Europe. The jackboots are polished and waiting in the wings.

This election, my friends, may well be our last chance to break the chains of this rotten duopoly. A Labour supermajority under Starmer would be the death knell of the Left, a final betrayal of everything the party once stood for. Oh, they’ll cry out for your vote, offering hollow forgiveness for past dissent. But make no mistake – in Starmer’s victory, we shall witness the death of any hope for meaningful change

In that super majority we shall see Lord Mandelson’s baleful augury that left-wing parties are inherently “unelectable” echoed through the land like a funereal knell over any prospect of meaningful change. The repetitive ritual of “lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, lose, lose, lose, Starmer” shall become a perpetual mourner’s threnody ushering in an oligarchic future where the tawdry pantomimes of Tory and Labour constitute mere narrative veneers obscuring an authoritarian uniparty system.

In this harrowing prospect, policy and ideology are utterly interchangeable – hollow vessels into which the prerogatives of capital are ceremonially decanted. True alternatives to the prevailing order of wealth concentration and ecocidal extraction will be banished as relics, and any who dare breathe the dread words “socialism” or “redistribution” will be met with the blind rejection borne of generational superstition.

It’s time for real representation, for genuine accountability. No more nodding donkeys in Parliament, no more yes-men to the establishment. We need voices that will speak truth to power, that will champion the cause of the many, not the privileged few.

Ah, but of course! The sycophants and party loyalists will come at you with their ad hominem attacks, their tired old refrains, won’t they? “You’re breaking ranks!” they’ll wail. “You’re letting the Tories in!” they’ll shriek, as if we’re all obliged to march in lockstep towards the cliff edge of political irrelevance.

But let’s be clear, shall we? It wasn’t the principled voter who abandoned ship – it was Labour that cast off its moorings and set sail for the lucrative shores of corporate bootlicking. All you’ve done, dear reader, is refuse to be herded like so many docile sheep into the abattoir of neoliberal consensus.

The notion that your thoughtful, considered vote for real change somehow “lets the Tories in” is a fallacy so absurd it would be laughable if it weren’t so pernicious. No, what truly paves the way for Tory rule is Labour’s craven capitulation to right-wing orthodoxy, their betrayal of working-class values, their prostration before the altar of globalisation, and most damningly, the authoritarian posturing of that empty suit, Sir Keir Starmer.

Neither should we kid ourselves – the Tories are political zombies, shambling on long past their expiration date. They’re about as electable as a three-week-old kipper left out in the sun. So don’t let yourself be bullied by these voices of faux pragmatism. When you step into that polling booth, be true to yourself and to your principles.

G.K. Chesterton, that rotund sage, once quipped that tradition is “the democracy of the dead.” Well, I say it’s high time we exorcise these political ghosts! This election, let’s bury the corpse of ‘lesser evilism’ once and for all. Forget this democracy of the dead – let’s vote for a living, breathing politics that serves the many, not the few.

So go on, put your ‘X’ where your heart and head tell you to. Break the chains, defy the naysayers, and vote for the future you want, not the one they tell you to accept. After all, if we keep swallowing the same bitter pill, how can we expect anything but more of the same nauseating results?

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” ―

Antonio Gramsci

This is a changing of the guard, a new face for an old decrepit system—a whitewash of change.

Remember the words of Eugene V. Debs: “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.” It’s time to plant the seeds of real change, to demand a politics that serves the people, not the powerful.

So I implore you, when you step into that polling booth, don’t sleepwalk into another five years of the same old story. Vote for change. Vote for hope. Vote to break the chains. Don’t let the lesser of two evils win. Don’t vote Tory or Labour. Vote for something you actually want, even if you don’t get it this time.

In that, we really do need to get behind a new Party that can offer us new hope, a Vox populi, a party for the people by the people, what we know is that party is no longer the Labour Party

But right now until you put your ‘X‘ on the ballot, power remains with you, the people. Do not settle for this race to the bottom these failed parties have engineered.

The future is yours to claim, if only you have the courage to reach for it. Don’t let this election be a stillbirth of change. Let it be the first cry of a new political dawn. If the monsters of the old world are truly dying; let us ensure that what struggles to be born is not another abomination, but a true democracy of the people, by the people, for the people.

The choice is yours. The power is yours. Use it wisely, for it may be the last chance you get.