So, it looks like a general election is going to happen in the next few months. The Tories have spaffed their majority up the wall, Boris Johnson has lost four out of four votes as Prime Minister, and Corbyn is running rings around him and his ‘crash out of the EU by default’ strategy. The only answer the Tories seem to have is a weird photoshop/fried chicken joke (because apparently all strategies now need to involve fried chicken) which turned into a complete self-own, showing that the right can’t meme and making Corbyn look like the hero of a heist movie where leftists dress in animal costumes and plot the downfall of capitalism.

Inevitably, the idea of a ‘Progressive Alliance’ to keep the left vote from splitting has started emerging in all the usual places and, on the surface, it’s a fairly strong idea. Historically, the right have managed to keep their vote base together, whereas the left vote gets split between Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems in England, with Plaid Cymru and the SNP helping to further divide the vote in Wales and Scotland.

In fact, the entire reason we’ve had three years of incessant Brexit chat is because the Conservatives were haemorrhaging votes to UKIP, and David Cameron wanted to shore up the right and keep the Tory vote together. This has obviously led to a massive lurch to the right, and Britain faces quite an existential threat as the Tories morph into a proto-fascist nightmare. As such, we on the left need to kick them out.

The easiest solution to this is to vote Labour. Labour is the only party with the vision to transform Britain into a country that works for everyone, not just a privileged few, and the only party with the genuine potential to do so. The Greens are lovely, but they’re not going to suddenly win a majority. The Lib Dems might be going through the motions of pretending like they’re at the grownups table, with their shadow cabinet and tough talk about governments of national unity, but they have 17 MPs — and that’s after all the recent defections. The SNP and PC don’t stand candidates outside of their own countries, so it’s literally impossible for them to win overall. Centrist denial is always strong, but the only alternative Prime Minister to Boris Johnson is Jeremy Corbyn.

The problem is that — for whatever reason — not everyone who should vote Labour will, so we’re left in a situation where three or four parties are competing for the same vote share. In some cases, this doesn’t matter too much in terms of kicking out the Tories. Glasgow South West is going to be SNP or Labour, with a combined vote of over 80% in 2017. But in a lot of cases, this does matter. Hastings and Rye (holla) re-elected Amber Rudd with a majority of only 346 in 2017. The Green candidate stepped aside to help Labour, and if the Liberal Democrats — who only mustered 1,885 votes total — had done the same, we would have kicked out the Home Secretary.

I cannot stress enough that the easiest way to get rid of the Tories is to vote Labour and ensure they win a majority. However, given that reality is often disappointing, this is my suggestion for what left-leaning parties should do:

1. The Greens. Caroline Lucas is pretty cool. She occasionally gets led into sharing stages with neoliberals and war criminals in the name of stopping Brexit, and she’ll write some mind-bendingly idiotic articles, but you know she means well and genuinely wants to change the country for the better. I would suggest that the Greens agree not to stand against Labour in any constituency and, in return, Labour won’t stand against the Greens in Brighton Pavilion and two of their target seats (like the Isle of Wight) tripling their MPs. Caroline Lucas would also be offered a ministerial position in a Corbyn government.

2. The SNP/Plaid Cymru. Similar to the Greens, an agreement would be reached where Labour and the SNP/PC don’t stand against each other in any seat that either has a Tory MP or where the Tories are second. For clarity’s sake, I would have them also not standing against each other where Labour and PC/SNP are in 1 and 2, but that’s probably unlikely. In return, Labour would offer the SNP the Secretary of State for Scotland and Plaid Cymru the Secretary of State for Wales positions. Also, and here’s the kicker, each nation would be offered an independence referendum at the end of the five-year term, providing the SNP and PC voted through all of Labour’s policies. I believe that Labour’s agenda would be enough to stave off independence and — if it doesn’t — then they probably deserve it.

3. The Lib Dems. The Lib Dems can fuck off.