“It’s not up to Tony Blair to rename my party to ‘New Labour'”.

And thus spake Tony Benn.

With nearly 10 million “hits”, it’s beyond reasonable doubt that the interview between Jeremy Paxman and Russell Brand has been an internet viral sensation. It’s appreciated that, despite successes as the national minimum wage, Blair’s government was ideologically of ‘no fixed abode’, and the “clause 4 moment” can be interpreted as a symbol of the rejection of socialism (akin to Hugh Gaitskell).

Jeremy Paxman himself has said publicly that he is not particularly drawn by any political party, and about three and a half years ago the popular Labour blogger, Sunny Hundal, started an initiative to recapture “a million lost votes”.

At around the time, Peter Kellner did a tour of the conferences circuit explaining how people had curiously become detached from “the political process”. The backdrop to this is that the political process produces one leg of the ‘One Labour tripos’, the other two legs being the ‘one nation economy’ and ‘one nation society’.

Various cogent explanations were offered for this ‘democratic deficit’ in England, but curiously not high on the list was the finding that this Coalition kept on introducing statutory instruments which had not been clearly signposted in either of their two manifestos (sic). One glaring example, apart from tuition fees of course, is the Health and Social Care Act (2012).

There is no doubt that Russell Brand’s viewpoint, whilst appearing somewhat self-exhibitionist, is potentially very engaging. However, Brand’s conclusion of not bothering voting appears at first blush to be completely at odds with what Tony Benn has been arguing for ages. That’s if you don’t factor in the possibility of a Lib-Lab coalition, with our unamended boundary changes.

Tony Benn is of course not the font of all knowledge, but he is an incredibly wise man whom is the target of much affection by modern day socialists. Benn has long argued that ‘democratic socialists’ often cannot buy influence by donating lots of money to multinational corporates, but they can exert influence their democratic vote. Rather than being Brand’s ‘lost cause’ or spoilt ballot paper, in Benn’s Brave New World a vote means hope.

And indeed logically any vote against decades of English policy designed to transfer resources from the State to the shareholder dividends of private limited companies and plcs, otherwise known as “privatisation”, fits the bill.

Also, if it’s the case that the Lobbying Bill has a parliamentary intention of strangling at birth trade union activity rather than the private sector companies wishing to ‘rent seek’ in a new liberalised NHS, Benn’s desire for us socialists to exercise our vote could not have come at a better time.

The question is of course: which party should I vote for which has the best chances of delivering a NHS based on reciprocity, solidarity, equality, cooperation, collaboration and social justice (otherwise known as socialism)? There’s an argument that true “believers” of the NHS might vote Labour (as the party which implemented the NHS under Clement Attlee’s Prime Ministership with Aneurin Bevan as health minister).

You could ‘hold your nose’ and vote Labour, as Professor Ray Tallis put it at the book launch of ‘SOS NHS’ at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town, or you could, on the other hand vote for one of the other alternatives, Greens or NHS Action Party. At the end of the day Benn, I’m sure, would endorse the idea that you should produce a vote most likely to produce your preferred option in the real world? But which party represents best how you feel?

If you’re faced with a choice between the Liberal Democrats and Tories, it might be tempting to vote Liberal Democrat. However, since the Liberal Democrat Party have ditched the “social and” part of the “social and liberal democrat party”, you might end up delivering a Liberal Democrat vote for a liberal part of a neoliberal Lab-Lib coalition on May 8th 2015, which is more than capable of delivering a neoliberal rather than socialist agenda. So it might not be worth voting at all, than to vote Liberal Democrat.

And the anger against Labour, particularly since the days of New Labour, is still very real. After New Labour, does Russell Brand have a point? But Andy Burnham MP emphasises categorically that times have changed: i.e. he’s repealing the Health and Social Care Act (2012), and “rejecting the market”.

As they say, the choice is yours.