Some important information for voters: "Best For Britain" are lying to you. They're lying to you because they're a British Nationalist front organisation who want to stop Scotland from being able to choose its own governments. They don't care *how* they keep Scotland under the thumb, and if lying to voters is what it takes, they think it's fine to do that. Hold them accountable for lying to you.

Probably like a lot of you, I tend to subconsciously use my family and friends as barometers of what is going on in the heads of the electorate at large.  With that in mind, I was rather alarmed that someone asked me just after the election was called whether she was allowed to vote SNP in a UK general election - not whether it was a good idea, but whether it was even possible, because clearly the media or the Labour party or someone had been feeding her the idea that Westminster elections are straight choices between Tory and Labour.  And this is not somebody who was voting in a general election for the first time - in fact I'm fairly sure she's voted for the SNP in multiple general elections in the past, and yet she'd still half-forgotten that the SNP are an option on the ballot paper.  So that's a useful reminder that some of the misleading propaganda out there is so effective that it's worth making sure that people you know are aware of the basics.

When I spoke to her again about ten days ago, she seemed to be much more aware of the range of options at the election, but had developed a nagging worry that she might need to vote Labour if she wants to get the Tory government out, again presumably because that was what she had been told by the media or by Labour themselves.  No, I explained, we live in the Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch constituency, which is a straightforward SNP-Labour battleground where the Tories don't even come into it.  But, she persisted, isn't Labour the better choice for getting rid of the Tories?  I shrugged and reiterated that the Tories aren't going to win Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch!  She started to say "but" again, but then seemed to accept the inescapability of the logic.  I could tell, though, that she still had the nagging thought that there must be more to it than that, and that somehow electing a Labour MP must "get rid of the Tories" in a way that electing an SNP MP does not.

But of course it doesn't.  That's simply not the way the system works, as any constitutional expert will tell you.  In the UK the parliament is elected and the government is appointed - the King appoints the Prime Minister and then the Prime Minister appoints other ministers.  But the King has to act in accordance with constitutional convention, which states that he can only appoint a Prime Minister who commands the confidence of the House of Commons.  Not the leader of the largest single party, so there's no horse race between Labour and the Tories to win the greatest number of seats.  If the majority of MPs don't want a Tory government, the King can't appoint one, and it really is as simple as that.  Both Labour and the SNP are opposed to a Tory government, so electing a Labour MP or an SNP MP has exactly the same effect - you're voting against a Tory government.  

That means, by extension, that it's only possible to vote tactically against the Tories in seats where the Tories are actually in contention - and in the minority of Scottish seats where that's the case, it just so happens that the SNP are the Tories' main opposition, and the SNP would thus be the tactical anti-Tory choice.  But everywhere else in Scotland, it's literally impossible to vote tactically against the Tories, because they're not going to win anyway.  All you can do is decide whether you'd rather be represented in parliament by an SNP or Labour (or in some cases Liberal Democrat) MP.

A real world example may help to illustrate the point. This is the result of the 1923 election in terms of seats - 

Conservatives 258

Labour 191

Liberals 158

Others 8

If you believe the present-day propaganda, that result would have meant that the Conservatives had won the horse race with Labour, and that Liberal voters had "let the Tories back in" by not voting Labour. But nope. The King couldn't appoint a Tory government, because neither Labour nor the Liberals would accept that, and between them those two parties outnumbered the Tories by miles.  Instead, the King appointed a Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald with Liberal support.

Now, I entirely understand that it's in the cynical self-interest of Labour candidates to mislead voters into misunderstanding all of this.  But deceiving voters should be no part of the role of a "non-party", "pro-European" organisation purporting to be offering voters an "objective" guide to "tactical voting".  

And yet in one of the most disreputable stunts ever seen in a general election, "Best For Britain" have deliberately coordinated with the Labour party to try to con voters in SNP-Labour marginal seats into thinking it's somehow possible to "vote tactically against the Tories" by voting Labour. Yesterday, Labour candidates in Scotland were queueing up on social media to claim that Best For Britain had objectively determined that a vote for Labour in their constituency was the only tactical way of kicking out the Tories. But if you read the small print on the Best For Britain website (extraordinarily difficult to find), it's openly admitted that the opposite is true, that it's not possible to vote tactically against the Tories in SNP-Labour marginals, and that a Labour vote in those seats is only being recommended because the people involved in Best For Britain just personally think Scotland would be better off being represented by Labour MPs (because they are British Nationalists who oppose Scottish independence). Well, that's an interesting pro-Labour view that you can validly put to voters if you want to go out door-knocking for the Labour party, but it quite plainly has got absolutely nothing whatever to do with an "objective tactical voting guide" and you shouldn't be outrageously lying to voters by pretending that it does.

Best For Britain have just outed themseves as the polar opposite of what they have purported to be. They are not a pro-European, cross-party organisation.  They are instead a front for a single pro-Brexit party, ie. Keir Starmer's Labour party.  They should be held accountable for what amounts to an attempt to rig a general election by deception, and I urge all voters to hold them to account.

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