Rishi Sunak may have fired the starting gun on the general election, but will July 4 be the UK’s Independents’ day?

Announcing the election date, Sunak referred to the Covid-19 crisis and his controversial furlough scheme, claiming that he would never leave the people of the UK to face such a trial alone. That’s not a good choice, considering his government funnelled around £800 billion to its super-rich friends under the cover of the pandemic while the rest of us fell into a cost-of-living crisis that is ongoing even now.

He scaremongered about the war in Ukraine, saying Vladimir Putin will not stop there, and warned of Islamist extremism in the Middle East. Did he mean Gaza? He also claimed China is going to threaten us. There’s no reason to believe any of these foreign nations are going to create problems for the UK.

And he blew a lot of smoke in our faces about Tory achievements – if you can call them that. He has attacked immigrants, meaning refugees are going to be carted off to Rwanda and there aren’t enough people for the jobs that need to be filled here. He has attacked benefit claimants and says this has improved the social security system.

He’s 20 points behind in the polls. He could have stood there and whistled the theme of The Magic Roundabout for all the good it would have done him.

But what good will it do us to have his government replaced with one that is no better? The Labour Party under Keir Starmer has slowly whittled away any democratic socialist policies and replaced them with neoliberal, ‘plastic Tory’ plans.

Starmer has made pledge after pledge, announced promise after promise – and broken them all when it suited him to do so. A few days ago he released a Labour ‘pledge card’ with six promises for the election. It was immediately satirised online with an image listing the pledges as: “1. Raindrops on roses. 2. Whiskers on kittens. 3. Bright copper kettles. 4. Warm woollen mittens. 5. Brown paper packages tied up with string.” That list would probably have been more welcome.

The fact is that the UK faces a huge threat of domination by right-wingers, bordering on fascists: Reform UK, the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are all on the right of the political spectrum.

The UK desperately needs a stronger representation on the left to balance that – and it can only come from left-wing Independent candidates.

And there are a lot of them.

Here are some of the people who need support – in the following constituencies:

Andrew Feinstein (Holborn & St Pancras – seeking to unseat Labour leader Keir Starmer)

Pamela Fitzpatrick (Harrow West – seeking to unseat Labour’s Gareth Thomas)

George Galloway (Rochdale – the Workers’ Party candidate)

Sam Gorst (Liverpool Garston & Halewood – seeking to unseat Labour’s Maria Eagle)

Kamel Hawwash (Birmingham Selly Oak – seeking to unseat Labour’s Steve McCabe)

Leanne Mohamad (Ilford North – seeking to unseat Labour’s Wes Streeting)

Craig Murray (Blackburn – the Workers’ Party candidate seeking to unseat Kate Hollern)

Claudia Webbe (Leicester East – this is a former Labour MP seeking to retain her seat)

Chris Williamson (Derby South – the Workers’ Party candidate seeking to unseat Labour’s Margaret Beckett)

Muhammed Akunjee (Bethnal Green & Stepney – seeking to unseat Labour’s Rushanari Ali)

Sian Berry (Brighton Pavilion – the Green Party candidate seeking to replace Caroline Lucas)

Jo Bird (Birkenhead – the Green Party candidate seeking to unseat Labour’s Alison McGovern)

Emma Dent Coad (Kensington & Bayswater – seeking to become the first MP in this new constituency)

Carla Denyer (Bristol Central – the Green Party candidate seeking to beat Thangam Debbonaire)

If you’re in those constituencies, please do what you can. If not, please promote them to those who are.

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