Why I, an ex-Labour MP, would be ashamed to admit voting for Jeremy

THE miners’ strike was only a few weeks old when I decided to join the Labour Party in 1984. I still had doubts about the party – I was unhappy with its apparent uncritical support of Arthur Scargill. And I wasn’t on board with unilateral nuclear disarmament. But I was impressed with Neil Kinnock and wanted more than anything for him to become Prime Minister.

So week after week, year after year, I attended meetings, delivered leaflets and canvassed voters. I became a delegate to my local party’s general management committee, first in Edinburgh and later in Glasgow.

I ate, drank and breathed the Labour Party.

I was appointed to investigate infiltration by the Trotskyist Militant organisation into my local party and faced legal action for my troubles. I even took a pay cut to accept a full-time job with the Labour Party as a press officer and was privileged to work with Donald Dewar, John Smith, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. I served in Parliament from 2001, proud to take the Labour whip in support of a Labour Government, even prouder when I was appointed as a Minister.

Even when I lost my seat in 2015, I was proud my party had helped prevent the catastrophe of Scottish independence; defeat at the General Election was just another price to be paid in the service of my country and my party.

After Jeremy Corbyn became leader, I still voted Labour, albeit more reluctantly than before. But last week I filled out my ballot paper for the General Election. I posted it without telling anyone how I voted. And the truth is: I’m too embarrassed to say.

For me, the choice has always been between Labour and the Conservatives. What’s the point of supporting a minor party with no chance of forming a government and actually implementing policies? But the Tories? Seriously? Aside from making both my parents spin in their graves, how could I possibly support a party I enthusiastically opposed in the Commons for so many years?

But how could I mark a cross against my local Labour candidate when I know that every vote for Labour on Thursday will be assumed by his supporters to be a vote of confidence in Corbyn? How could I support a party that chose as its leader – twice! –a man who spent the whole of the 1980s offering support to my nation’s enemies in the IRA? A man who calls the most vicious anti-Semites on the planet his friends?

Could I bring myself to support a man who evades and dissembles whenever he’s questioned about his past? A man who I know would scrap our country’s independent nuclear deterrent as soon as he was given the keys to No10?

Corbyn and his appalling allies on the hard Left pride themselves on being Marxists. They have nothing but contempt for the wealth-makers of businesses large and small. They would like nothing more than to repeal every piece of trade union legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher, because they see nothing wrong in workers being called out on strike by a show of hands in a car park. They would welcome the return of secondary and mass picketing.

I looked at my ballot paper and knew that if I voted Labour, I would in effect be voting for a party whose leader is, without a shadow of a doubt, the least qualified, the most unfit candidate for high office that any party has ever offered the British electorate.

So I placed my cross and I sealed the envelope and posted it before I could change my mind. Labour or Conservative? I will not say, because either way I am utterly heartbroken at the choice I was given. And I am ashamed of the choice I finally made.