Will the leaders of the smaller parties (Plaid, Green, SNP) open the back door for the Conservatives to be re-elected – by eroding Labour’s vote with lies?

This writer has spent a lot of time, over the last couple of days, debunking myths about the Labour Party.

People reading the Vox Political Facebook page will have seen a lot of verbiage showing that Labour did in fact vote against the Bedroom Tax, that claims about Johann Lamont being told to keep her opposition to it quiet until Ed Miliband had decided to do the same were based on nothing more than gossip put out by “a source” in a newspaper story… even that Labour has never advocated the slaughter of innocent people in the Middle East (as one commenter claimed – no, really, they did! They reckoned Labour actually said innocent people in the Middle East should be killed).

There have been other smears – and it is possible that even more will be broadcast on ITV this evening, starting at 8pm, when the leaders of the smaller ‘left-wing’ parties take part in a televised election debate.

Judging from their past record, it seems entirely likely that the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party leaders (Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood and Natalie Bennett, respectively) will fling falsehoods about Labour – because they think they can steal left-wing votes from the bigger party.

They will be doing David Cameron’s job for him.

If you can’t see why, here’s the explanation: In constituencies where Labour and the Conservatives are both contesting a seat, with candidates from the Green Party and either Plaid or the SNP, any vote taken from Labour to boost the non-Tory parties will mean that the Conservatives have a better chance of winning* – none of them are trying to take votes from the Tories, remember. Conservative voters regularly turn out in large numbers to support their candidates, even though this means lower living standards for everybody.

It seems clear that the SNP, Plaid and the Greens are too timid to tackle the Tory wolf at the door.

Instead, they’ll carry on chipping away at Labour with stories about imagined crimes.

Like the proverbial blind person in the story, they are happy to stay in a darkened room, looking for a black cat – that isn’t there.

*Some might say this does not count in Scotland, where the SNP is polling more strongly than Labour. While this is correct (at the time of writing), this blog has shown that much of the SNP’s support is based on exactly the kind of lies about Labour that This Writer has been having to debunk. Any political organisation that deliberately lies to the electorate in order to gain votes does not deserve even to participate in the process.

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