James Cleverly’s defeat shows why we should beware of tactical voting - Yorkshire Post Letters
Many will remember the look of surprise and disbelief on the face of Ed Miliband, in September 2010, when he realised that he had defeated his brother David in the contest for the Labour Party leadership. David Miliband was meant to be the anointed successor to Gordon Brown.
Here we go again, but this time it is the Tories messing up and trying to be too clever by half. James Cleverly, having delivered the best speech at the Conservative Party conference, was ahead of the field to find the final two candidates before the membership had the ultimate vote.
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Hide AdSeveral MPs decided to vote tactically to ensure that their preferred second choice got through to accompany Cleverly. This has clearly backfired with the two second choice candidates succeeding and Cleverly being eliminated.


The membership is now presented with a choice between two right wingers with nobody representing the One Nation tradition of the party.
It is quite likely that at the recent General Election, Labour and LibDem supporters voted for each other tactically to remove the sitting Tory MP. But the inherent risk of tactical voting is that you can never guarantee the outcome of an election.
One of the strongest arguments for proportional representation is that you can vote for the candidate who best represents your views regardless of the others.
Beware of tactical voting!
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