For the last week, while canvassing, I’ve met several longstanding Labour Party members who said they didn’t know who they were voting for yet. Why? First, because they think defeating Boris is the most important issue. Second, because they needed to wait for the tactical voting websites to tell them who is more likely to win here in the Two Cities between the LibDems and Labour, and that is who they would vote for. But this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a website tells everyone that Labour is more likely to win, and everyone therefore votes Labour, the website can claim it got it right. Or vice versa.

There are many reasons why tactical voting is a mistake. Most importantly, it stops you from making an autonomous political decision as to which party’s policies you support, and acting on it. Yet this is our most important role as citizens in a democracy. Instead, it is based on the belief that you can change political parties like you change your clothes, without damage to the political system or to the parties themselves. This is false. Moreover, why would you trust a website run by people you don’t know, with potential biases in their politics and their statistical calculations, using polls that may or may not be representative or accurate, to determine how you vote?

Like almost everyone I’ve spoken to on the doorstep these last weeks, I think it’s crucial to defeat the Tories. But it is even more important who wins this election and forms the next government. The only way the Labour Party can win is if people vote Labour, out of conviction, not tactically, up and down the country.

The Lib Dems haven’t got a chance of forming the next government. In the City, they only got a few thousand votes in 2017, whereas Labour almost won. They will never be able to fill that gap. If they are counting on tactical voting, it’s because they don’t have the policies to convince a majority to support them. Labour has. Read the Labour manifesto (https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/). You cannot ask for more.

Promotion of tactical voting is a form of corruption of the political system. Don’t give a website the power of your vote.

If you live in the Two Cities (City of London and City of Westminster) vote for Gordon Nardell, the Labour Party candidate, because he is by far the best person for the job.