Tactical voting tool aimed at defeating Tories, Farrage goes live ahead of UK vote

5 months ago 38

The GetVoting.org initiative, spearheaded by Best for Britain activist organisation, launched a tool on Monday to show British voters how best to defeat the ruling Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.

Calls for tactical voting are nothing new for the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which encourages a winner-take-all approach and penalises a divided opposition.

However, UK voters – among whom “13 million […] would consider voting tactically to get rid of the government”, according to a GetVoting.org study – can now rely on a new tool.

By entering a UK postcode, the tool will tell users which party is best placed to defeat the Conservatives and Reform UK in that constituency.

For example, in the historically Conservative north-west English constituency of Blackpool North & Fleetwood, where Labour is the largest opposition party, the tool unsurprisingly suggests the vote go to Labour.

For the East Anglian constituency of Ely and East Cambridgeshire, where the Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats are separated by less than three percentage points, the tool suggests the latter, explaining that they have maintained a consistent lead.

Meanwhile, with just a couple of weeks to go before the vote, the campaign has largely avoided mentioning the country’s relationship with Europe, as Euractiv has previously reported.

But commenting to Euractiv on the European dimension of her work, Naomi Smith, CEO of Best for Britain and founder of the GetVoting.org website, was clear:

“The Conservatives refuse to change their mind on Europe, so we need a change of government. A closer EU-UK relationship is not only possible but essential, and the next UK Government must prioritise a closer relationship with our European neighbours, best approached through our 114 pragmatic and evidence-based recommendations.”

While it remains to be seen whether tactical voting will make the difference on 4 July, it is clear that over the next 16 days, the Conservatives will have to close a large polling gap.

(Chris Powers| Euractiv.com)