IF you are tired of the Tories but leery of Labour, then I can understand why you might skip voting for anyone at all at the General Election on Thursday, July 4.
I get it. I really do.
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The Tories have been in power for 14 long years but taxes are at a historic high.
The police don’t seem to give a flying fig about rising crime.
The trains don’t work.
Sometimes it feels as if the country doesn’t work.
The bright, sunlit uplands that we were promised after Brexit never really materialised, did they?
But not voting — or wasting your vote on the Monster Raving Reform UK party — would be a mistake.
Because our future will be decided by the people who vote.
And how could anyone not want their voice to be heard?
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It’s a lie that voting changes nothing.
Only choosing to abstain from democracy changes nothing.
Keir Starmer on 4th of July election
Only not voting is a meaningless gesture.
There is apathy in the UK and we need to snap out of it — now.
Or sleepwalk our way to an incompetent socialist Government.
I don’t think that Keir Starmer is a bad man.
I believe that rescuing the Labour Party from the lunatic Left who worshipped Jeremy Corbyn was a huge political achievement.
I think that Starmer’s strategy of wrapping himself in the Union Jack is a shrewd move after the last Labour leader, who got weak at the knees dreaming about Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRA.
But I know that everything will get far worse if Labour get in.
All of it.
Under Labour, I know that taxes will rise even higher.
I know that the emboldened trade unions will make our lives hell.
I know we will be weaker in the face of foreign aggression.
And I know that wondering aloud if unskilled immigration is possibly just a tad too high will get you called a racist.
In my blood and my bones, I know that things can get far, far worse than they are right now. And you know it too.
Smug certainty
There are things that Rishi Sunak can’t change.
Our fresh-faced PM can’t change the fact that the Tories have been in power for 14 years.
Rishi can’t change the fact that a lot of working-class voters changed the habit of a lifetime to vote Conservative at the last General Election, and then felt betrayed by Boris Johnson’s lockdown-breaking Partygate.
Sunak can’t change the legacy of Tory economic incompetence left by Liz Truss.
But Rishi is young, smart, brave, decent and he loves this country.
Keir Starmer’s greatest asset is that he does not frighten ordinary Brits.
Starmer only bores us.
Doesn’t our great country deserve better than that?
We have a choice. And we have a vote
Rishi explicitly warned Conservative Party members what would happen to the economy if they chose Liz Truss for leader — it would tank. They didn’t listen.
Today Sunak warns the wider electorate what will happen if they let Starmer into Downing Street — it will tank.
Are they listening today?
Perhaps, as all the polls and the pundits predict with smug certainty, the General Election is already a done deal, and it will be Keir Starmer’s Labour Party by a landslide.
But no General Election is won until the British people have spoken.
And we have not spoken until we have put our cross in that box.
Previous generations sacrificed everything to preserve our freedom to vote. Voting is a privilege.
Our right to vote is more than priceless. It is sacred.
We have a choice. And we have a vote.
And on July 4, we should crawl across broken glass to cast it.
Just look on the bright side, Ben
IT is always difficult to judge how the marriage of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck is progressing.
Jen always looks glad to be alive.
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Affleck always looks like the most miserable git in Hollywood.
J-Lo was her usual sunny, radiant self as she promoted her new sci-fi movie Atlas in Mexico.
Affleck looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders when he dined out with pals in LA.
How does a man who is married to Jennifer Lopez always manage to look so glum?
Tyson is still a hero
NO British sportsman has ever shown more bravery than Tyson Fury in the ninth round of his title fight against Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk.
Fury divides opinion – although most of the negativity about him comes from the behaviour of his lively entourage.
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But nobody can doubt the raw courage it took for the Gypsy King to stay on his feet when every brain cell was telling his body to collapse.
After the fight Fury blurted out that the judges had favoured Usyk because Ukraine is at war.
It was impossible not to cringe.
But nobody should be interviewed immediately after being punched in the head for 36 minutes.
Muhammad Ali made the same kind of graceless comment after Smokin’ Joe Frazier beat him fair and square in 1971.
Ali refused to admit defeat, claiming the judges’ verdict was “a white man’s decision”.
Frazier deserved more respect. So did Usyk.
Yet Tyson Fury is a great British hero.
And his nation should be proud of him.
HOT on the heels of Jonathan Yeo’s controversial fifty-shades-of-red depiction of King Charles comes a portrait of the Princess of Wales that will adorn the cover of society mag Tatler.
It is by Hannah Uzor. “She has risen to her role,” says Hannah.
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“She carries herself with such dignity, elegance and grace.”
The portrait of Kate has, as we say in the art game, “divided critics”.
Which is a polite euphemism for “looks nothing like her”.
Reader words so kind
THANK you for all your messages about the death of our dog, Stan.
You wrote to me about dogs who died on exactly the same day as Stan – Saturday May 11.
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And you wrote to me about dogs who died a week later, and dogs who died years ago, but who have left their paw prints on your heart for ever.
“We lost our beloved Yorkshire terrier, Ben, two years ago and it still feels raw,” wrote Dave Gittins of Cannock, Staffs.
“You never forget them.”
That’s so true, Dave.
Our dogs give us a pure and unconditional love and when it is gone, oh how we yearn for it.
Grief is indeed the price we pay for love.
But when I look back on the 12-and-a-half happy years Stan spent as part of our family, and all the laughs we had, and the way Stan made me smile every day, and all the sunrises and sunsets we saw in every kind of weather, then I know one thing for certain.
This grief is a price worth paying.
THE General Election will be ten days before the final of the Euros in Olympiastadion, Berlin.
So ten days before England win their first major football trophy since 1966.
Back home, the lads will no doubt be invited to 10 Downing Street for tea, biscuits and a photo shoot.
And our newly elected Prime Minister will get the greatest PR boost since the besuited Beatles collected their MBEs in 1965.
CRAIG MACKINLAY, Tory MP for South Thanet, can teach us all lessons about the human spirit.
Last September, Craig became ill with sepsis, a life-threatening condition where the body damages its own organs in response to infection.
He was put into a coma.
When he woke, 16 days later, his arms and legs were blackened by blood clots and lack of circulation.
Just before Christmas, he had a quadruple amputation.
This week the “bionic MP” returned to the Commons with four prosthetic limbs, calling on the PM to do more to recognise early signs of sepsis.
The House came together to give Craig three standing ovations.
His resilience, courage and spirit are incredible to behold.
Craig Mackinlay is a credit to Westminster.
And the human race.
DISGRACED former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells repeatedly broke down in tears when publicly grilled about the Horizon computer scandal.
I wonder how many tears were shed by the innocent sub-postmasters and their families who were mercilessly hounded by Vennells’ goon squad.
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Over 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting after the Post Office supplied them with faulty accounting software.
They were hounded into public disgrace, prison – and the grave.
Sub-postmaster Martin Griffiths was falsely accused of taking £60,000 at his Cheshire branch.
Martin took his own life in 2013.
Paula Vennells with a lack of Christian compassion – she is an Anglican priest – once sniffed that Mr Griffiths may have had “mental health issues”.
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So I feel no sympathy for the wretched woman as she sobbed again while apologising for a disgraceful comment she made to MPs about sub-postmasters “being tempted to put their hands in the till”.
Whatever Vennells is suffering now, it is nothing compared to the misery she heaped on all those innocent men and women.
