Over the last few weeks I’ve discarded a number of responses to the fast-approaching General Election, fearing they were self-indulgent and added little to the overwhelming priority – to oust the Tories and to break from the selfish bullshit, that is neoliberalism.

At the heart of my abandoned efforts was a desire to explain my love/hate relationship with the Labour Party [LP] – from enthusiastic young canvasser in 1964 to being the committed Chesterfield delegate at the LP national conference in 1987 through to having little good to say about neoliberal New Labour for nigh on thirty years. All this was a preface to seeking to persuade you that I carried no naive torch for Jeremy Corbyn. This said, I did hope that something was on the move within the Party. The 2017 election LP comeback from the depths suggested that my fragile optimism should not be cast aside.

The passing years have dented inevitably my perspective. Whilst to be expected the coordinated mainstream media assault, from the Mail to the Guardian, on Corbyn’s character has been overwhelming. This pseudo-psychological narrative has so insinuated itself into people’s thinking that, for example, contributions on the youth work’s social media sites echo the fixation. Politics is reduced to personality. Corbyn’s dithering versus Johnson’s deceit is about as insightful as it gets.

Rarely do we find an engagement with the profound ideological, economic and political choice posed by this ‘snap’ election. On the one hand the Tories stand for a continuity with the ‘free’ market, dressed up in an authoritarian, populist, nationalist garb. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor. On the other Labour aspires to resurrect afresh a social-democratic, redistributive agenda ‘for the many, not the few’.

To back the latter offers no guarantees, but it opens a door to possible progress that will be slammed shut if the Tories prevail.

This stark choice is caught in the following letter sent to The Guardian by leading contemporary musicians, about whose work I know little, but who represent certainly a significant current on the music scene.

We are musicians, artists, rappers and grime MCs, and we will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party this election. We’re not voting Labour in the naive hope that they will solve all the problems our communities face. We vote because they offer an urgent alternative to the destructive policies of the Conservatives.

Ending austerity will, for the first time in many of our lifetimes, use the taxes we all already pay into, to reinvest in the housing, youth clubs, community groups and cultural centres being destroyed by the current government. These spaces made many of us who we are today, and while we don’t rely on them like we used to, we know how important they will be for the next generation. It is only by restoring them that our communities can take charge of our own destinies, and build our own solutions to the problems we face.

We are under no illusions about Labour’s own imperial history, and we don’t think the British establishment is fundamentally going to change. But we are sick of our taxes being spent on fighting more wars and building more jails. Jeremy Corbyn has been one of the few people who has fought against injustice all his political life, from apartheid South Africa to the bombing of Libya.

To deny from our own, now quite comfortable places, that a Labour government would improve the lives of millions would betray the communities we come from. The opportunity for people-led change can be made possible under a Jeremy Corbyn Labour government. End austerity, rebuild our communities and take back the means to change our lives for the better.

Surely, in an election that could transform the livelihoods of many, and be the difference between life or death for many more, life is something worth voting for. Join us. Register to vote before midnight on Tuesday 26 November. And vote Labour on Thursday 12 December.

Signed by Akala, Stormzy and others – see Musicians backing Labour

I don’t think they exaggerate, whether talking about life or death in the present or the future. Crucially they recognise that a vote for Labour is no more than the start, a Labour victory merely the beginning. People-led change requires our ongoing involvement in politics, in the grass-roots struggles to transform our collective existence.

Even as I pen the phrase, a Labour victory, I falter. Calling for a vote for Labour in England, exceptions such as the Greens in Brighton aside, is utterly understandable, but what about the situation elsewhere in the disUnited Kingdom? Two interrelated concerns colour my sense of what best to do. Firstly the bottom line is that we rid ourselves of the Tories and break from the Thatcherite legacy of self-centred individualism. Secondly I am deeply at odds with the idea that Labour is the sole repository of compassion and justice, a form of ‘monopoly radicalism’. It is caught in the leadership’s dismissal of a post-election progressive alliance, involving, say, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens. My heresy is that I feel a coalition government led by Labour, within which politicians listen acutely to the people and to each other, would be an important step towards a more democratic British politics.

Since 1979 we have endured the conscious undermining of our commitment to one another, of our belief in the common good. We have been coaxed and cajoled into being first and foremost passive consumers rather than critical citizens. Since 2008 neoliberalism has been a broken model, but the vision of ‘another world is possible’ seemed to be beyond us. It is clear that the totally unexpected election of Corbyn to the Labour leadership shocked the status quo. Put aside, for a moment, the inevitable criticism that the LP leadership could have done this, that or the other better, the orchestrated, toxic campaign against Corbyn in particular has ironically little to do with the supposed weakness of his character or his alleged virulent anti-semitism. It has everything to do with the challenge posed to the ruling class or elite, if you prefer, by an economic and political programme focused on social equality and social justice. Such a proposal is an anathema to the most influential fractions of the powerful.

At this juncture the choice is plain, even if the consequences depend critically on our political involvement beyond the polling booth. We have a fleeting opportunity to close the era of social selfishness and launch a renewed era of social solidarity.

FROM SOCIAL SELFISHNESS TO SOCIAL SOLIDARITY

SEIZE THE MOMENT! VOTE TO OUST THE TORIES!