Today's The Day

No, not yours, America. Just relax and enjoy your holiday. Here on our side of the pond we have an election to decide.

If you live in the UK the polls are now open, marking the last few hours of perhaps the most irritating general election ever. The headline choice is between one party that’s making promises nobody believes, and another party that’s tried very hard not to make any promises at all. One of them is about to win a landslide victory despite few of the people who plan to vote for it having any enthusiasm; the other is utterly loathed, not least by those who were formerly its strongest supporters.

Don’t follow the herd.

You don’t have to vote for either of them, though. Another thing that’s likely to set this election apart is the number of people who don’t vote for either of the main parties. As more and more people conclude that the Tories and Labour are now fundamentally the same, with just minor and largely cosmetic differences, the two-party system is breaking down.

As far back as almost everyone alive can remember, the big question before every election was whether Labour or the Tories would form the next government. That hasn’t always been the choice, though. Just over a century ago the main parties were the Tories and the Liberals. Then in 1923, under Ramsay McDonald’s leadership, Labour replaced the Liberals as the main opposition to the Tories. The Liberals, exhausted and defeated, sank into irrelevance and remained there for 70 years; now they survive only as half of the Liberal Democrats’ name.

So, even in our two-party system, it’s possible for a new party to replace one of the dominant ones. The SDP came close to replacing Labour in the 1980s, lagging just 2.2% behind Labour’s vote share in 1993, but didn’t quite do it. Now the Tories are the party that’s looking nervously over its shoulder at a growing competitor.

The Tories are now facing an existential crisis. A couple of polls suggest the Liberal Democrats could replace them as His Majesty’s Opposition. Several polls have shown Reform UK getting a higher share of the vote. The end of the Conservatives as a dominant political force is now a realistic possibility - and, as I’ve said here before, if that fate befalls them it will be richly deserved.

The Labour government that will take office tomorrow will be a disaster. Keir Starmer will make a terrible prime minister - a political weathervane, swinging wildly towards the policies he thinks will be most popular; a weak, unimaginative leader trying to keep the lid on a party seething with far-left lunatics, bitter class warriors, anti-Semitic bigots and deranged wokels.

A Conservative victory is no longer possible, as even Tory ministers are now starting to admit, but if it did happen it would be scarcely less disastrous than Labour will be. The Tories say all the right things about tax, growth, defence and secure borders, but looking at what they’ve done over the last 14 years it’s clear they’re actually well to the left of Tony Blair’s government. The ugly truth is that whatever the Tory manifesto says, the party can’t be trusted to deliver it.

Of course you could always vote for the Liberal Democrats. I have no idea why you’d want to. Apart from a quasi-religious obsession with the European Union, I don’t know what the Lib Dems want anymore. Their entire campaign for this election, as far as I can see, consisted of that capering fool Ed Davey throwing himself into lakes like a 1976 It’s a Knockout contestant who licked too much old paint as a child.

Personally, as soon as I post this, I’m going to walk down to the marketplace and vote. Who for? Well, our traditional parties have let us down badly, and are about to deliver another five years of betrayal and disappointment. If you vote for one of them - any one; it doesn’t matter - you’re voting for this country to sink even deeper into debt, lethargy and cultural dissolution. If we keep on doing the same old things, we’ll keep on getting the same depressing results. So today I’m going to try something new, something that gives me hope there’s a way to start fixing the damage.

I’m going to vote for Reform UK.