An idea to give Theresa May and the complacent Tories a shock they'd never forget

Here's an idea that could give Theresa May and the complacent Tory elitists a shock they'd never forget.

The idea is a fairly simple one, but like all good ideas it would take solidarity and people pulling together and working hard to make it happen. History is absolutely clear that powerful elites don't give up their power without a fight.

The idea

Britain's woefully antiquated voting system means that we're all familiar with the concept of tactical voting, which is the idea of holding our noses and voting for the (usually pretty unappealing) candidate who is most likely to beat the candidate that we absolutely detest.

What I'm proposing is a kind of tactical voting, but rather than doing it in a piecemeal fashion, it needs to be done in an organised manner in specifically targeted seats so that instead of the opposition being split between several candidates, all the resources are pooled behind a single Unity candidate in each target constituency.

 As far as I'm concerned the target seats should be the seats of the most disgraceful, malicious and downright inept Tory ministers, and also the seats that Tory candidates cheated their way into in 2015 though electoral fraud.

In these specific seats the opposition parties should agree to pool resources in order to field a single Unity candidate.

Unity candidates

Ideally the Unity candidate being fielded to contest the seats of Tory government ministers should have a lot of expertise in the ministers' brief:

• A respected doctor could stand as the Unity candidate against the health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

• Someone with some actual foreign policy experience could stand against the embarrassing buffoon of a foreign secretary Boris Johnson that we're lumbered with.

• A well known human rights campaigner could stand against the human rights scrapping Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

• An environmentalist/countryside campaigner could stand against the Defra minister Andrea Leadsom.

• Someone with actual legal qualifications could stand against the totally unqualified Lord Chancellor Liz Truss.

• A widely respected economics expert could stand against the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond.

• A public transport expert could stand against the transport minister Chris Grayling.

• An experienced community activist could stand against the Communities minister Sajid Javid.

• A teacher/education expert could stand against the education secretary Justine Greening.

• A welfare expert could stand against the DWP minister Damian Green.

• Someone with experience in the media or arts could stand against the culture secretary Karen Bradley.

In the Tory electoral fraud constituencies, it might turn out that quite a few of the candidates who finished second in 2015 end up standing as the Unity candidate, but one thing is for sure, all the Unity candidates should be selected in an open and accountable democratic ballot of local people.

Accountability

If elected, the Unity candidate should be accountable to the people who elected them, and to the parties that joined forces to support their campaign. The Unity candidate should agree to stick to a democratically developed local manifesto based on the wishes of local people, and to abide to a formal cross-party consensus agreement when voting on national issues.

The Unity candidate should also pledge to serve as a Unity MP for the duration of the next parliament, or to resign their seat and call a by-election if they intend to officially align themselves with any specific party.

The need for speed

Theresa May called an opportunistic snap election in just seven weeks time because she didn't want to allow the opposition sufficient time to organise against her. It was a fantastically self-serving move to put the interests of the Tory party above the interests of the nation as a whole.

This dishonest, self-serving opportunism isn't surprising in the slightest though, because she's a self-serving Tory of the very worst kind who U-turns so often she must be developing centrifugal forces!

Theresa May has clearly tried to wrong foot all opposition to her dictatorial style of government by making the election campaign as short as possible, so there is very little time organise and hold her government's terrible record up to public scrutiny.

This means that if the Unity candidate idea is going to get off the ground, it needs to be done in a matter of weeks because the deadline for nominations is the 11th of May.

A shock they'd never forget

If the Unity candidate idea turns out to be successful, it would give the public an opportunity to vote for real experts, and for non-cheats. It would give people a fantastic opportunity to send a powerful message to the out-of-touch elitists in the Tory party that their ideological vandalism of our society, and their tactic of cheating their way to electoral victory are completely unacceptable.

It would be a genuine anti-establishment rebellion that pretty much anyone but the most die-hard Tory tribalists could get behind.

If it ends up removing even just a few Tory ministers and 2015 General Election cheats from power it would give them a shock that they'd never forget. If people really got behind it, then it could shake the complacent self-serving Tory party to their foundations and deliver a number of highly qualified specialists that any government would be utterly foolish to try to sideline and ignore.

Contact your party

If you like this idea and you're a member or supporter of a political party, contact them as soon as possible and tell them that you would like them to consider supporting the idea of fielding Unity candidates in specific target seats as a matter of urgency.

If you live in a seat held by a Tory government minister, or in one of the seats that the Tories won through electoral fraud in 2015, you could contact your local party too and ask them to cooperate with the other opposition parties, and offer to help them organise the Unity candidate campaign.

Write to your local political representatives here: Write to them

Contact the opposition party you support here:

Green Party: (contact page, Twitter, Facebook)
Labour Party:(contact page, Twitter, Facebook)
Liberal Democrats: (contact page, Twitter, Facebook)
Plaid Cymru: (contact page, Twitter, Facebook)
SNP*: (contact page, Twitter, Facebook)
UKIP**: (contact page, Twitter, Facebook)

Spread the wordTheresa May has complacently opened the door to an idea like this because she thinks the rest of the country are too weak and too disorganised to stand up to her autocratic ambitions but if we all pull together we could achieve a seismic shift in the way we do politics in this country.

If you like the idea of Unity candidates then it's vital to spread the word. Share this article on social media (#Unity2017), talk about the idea with your friends, your relatives, your work colleagues, your neighbours. Help to get some momentum going. Together we can change things for the better.

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* = I have included the SNP here because although there is only one Tory seat in Scotland, it is held by the appalling David Mundell, who is the Scotland Secretary. Maybe, despite their incredibly strong position in Scottish politics, the SNP would like to show solidarity with the other opposition parties by backing a unity candidate in this one seat.

** = I've included UKIP here because, although I detest their hard-right ideology, they do actually support some quite progressive things that I actually agree with (Proportional Representation, democratisation of the House of Lords, more local referendums, devolution for England, cancelling rip-off PFI scams ...). They also have a lot of supporters/voters who are not inherently bad people, who might well get behind a genuine anti-establishment rebellion and have a lot to contribute to the campaign.