Oh, snap (general election)

A quick note to my fellow liberals and Remainers about the recently announced general election:

I do not give one solitary damn about your conscience or your precious ideological purity. I do not care about how you don't want to vote for “the lesser of two evils” because you'll feel icky afterwards. This isn't about you or your petty little self-image. I do not care about your damned straight white privilege knowledge that no matter if its the greater or lesser evil in power, you'll likely survive.

Protest voting for unfeasible or imaginary “perfect” options is what got us into this mess. It got us the coalition government that birthed the current one, it saddled the US with Trump, and now we have Brexit and potential nuclear war so look how well that all worked out!

So when you got to that polling station, hold you fucking nose and vote with one thing in mind: do you want a Tory government and a hard Brexit? If so, vote Tory and be damned, you fucking idiot. If not, and you live in a Conservative-controlled area, look into the margin of victory for your area in the last election and vote for the most likely alternative: Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, whoever has a credible chance of winning and representing NOT THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY in parliament.

This is a second referendum on Brexit. Its a one-issue election. The Tories don't want to have to campaign for re-election after the two year deadline when all sorts of messy realities will have come home to roost. They want a solid mandate for Brexit whilst their supporters are high on a consequence free victory.

And if a bunch of wet white liberal handwringers who worry that Jeremy Corbyn is not absolutely perfect in every way hand that mandate to them just as they let Brexit pass because they imagined a third, invisible “Leave but I don't really mean it, I just want to send a message” option on their referendum form then, frankly, don't expect any sympathy from me if you're part of that.

Just once, just this one damn time, could the liberal movement in this country be pragmatic and ruthless about something?

This is a chance for damage control. Take it.