Let’s Tramp the Tory Party into the Dirt
There’s a great, vitriolic Elvis Costello song about former Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, called Tramp the Dirt Down. It’s very relevant to our era.
The song was released in 1989, a decade into the reign of sadistic Thatcher, who imposed a cruel, experimental neoliberalism on Britain, which tore communities apart and left many people destitute. Elvis had started performing the song a couple of years before releasing it.
In the song, Costello says he’d like to live long enough to savour the moment when "they finally put you in the ground" and he’ll "stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down".
The 'iron lady' ultimately died in 2013, three years into another Tory period in power, which has killed hundreds of thousands through swingeing austerity, and many more through pandemic mismanagement.
The changing face of eternal cruelty
The era from 2010 has seen multiple increasingly inept Tory leaders assume 'control' of the party and UK. The fact that they’ve changed faces more often than Doctor Who doesn’t get them out of accusations against them. They are ALL complicit in mismanaging the economy, undermining OUR health service and peddling far-right narratives, while trashing the public services WE fund.
There are valid reasons for not liking Keir Starmer or others in Labour. There are good reasons to feel contempt for things the Lib Dems have done over the years, especially when they pimped themselves to the Tories and broke their own pledges. But there are THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of reasons to despise the Tories.
Elvis Costello had to wait over a decade to watch Thatcher vanish into the dirt. We’ve had almost 15 years of sadistic Tory austerity, corruption, lies and sheer ineptitude. And now we have the power to not just vote the Tories out but destroy them and stamp them into the ground, like we might vampires. And we can do that by voting tactically.
Hold your nose
I know it’s difficult to vote for a party you don’t like or have lost respect for. But we have ONE opportunity to cause so much electoral damage to the Tory Party that it’s likely to split into at least two toxic and unelectable parties. This could keep the Tories out of power for a generation or more.
As educated and younger people rarely vote Tory, much of UK society 20 years down the line is likely to view it with contempt as well. It’s possible that the Conservative Party never bounces back but instead we see an unelectable stream of fringe right-wing parties run by flaky narcissists. And milkshake magnet Nigel Farage won’t live forever!
People have the power
Ultimately the electoral devastation Tories are facing is down to them — but it is our reaction to it and memory of it that gives us this once in a lifetime opportunity to destroy them.
I don’t want to promote a particular one but there are a number of tactical voting sites which tell you which party to vote for in your area to maximise the damage done to the Tories.
Sometimes this will be Labour, sometimes the Lib Dems, sometimes the Green Party and sometimes Scottish or Welsh nationalists.
Please use your vote tactically and help us bury the Tories!
