Anti-Climacus

LINK: Nick Cohen has a go at the polls for the upcoming British parliamentary elections:

"But the real problem isn't intellectual or moral but the practical possibility that political sophisticates are nowhere near as wised-up as they like to imagine. All the calculations and the striking of daring positions stand on a reckless gamble that the polls are right."

There's actually quite a bit of this going on in leftist British circles at the moment, and as someone who finds polling inherently suspicious and also can't imagine why anyone would vote strategically against the people they want to win*, I wholeheartedly support both parts of it. Polls about elections are really fickle things, and it's never a good idea to plan your actions around those someone else (or a great number of other people) might take; but if you want a Labour government--even if you buy into that "Bliar" stuff and think he's an awful man and hate the war with Iraq and in spite of all this, you still want a Labour government--vote for Labour.

*I grant that the Labour-Lib Dem alliance functions pretty well in some otherwise Tory constituencies, but in that case, you're still voting for whom you want to win (in this case, it's just not the Conservatives)