Equal Before The Ballot Box

Voting can be a humbling diversion. You quickly realise that this is a process where there is genuine equality, from the highest of flyers to the lowliest and least mobile: this morning, casting his ballot just before me was a man who was clearly less than fully mobile, but absolutely determined to exercise his democratic right.

He shuffled slowly but with some purpose from receipt of voting slip to voting booth, back to place carefully folded ballot in the familiar black metal box, then contentedly out of the polling station. His progress was clearly uncomfortable, but his determination absolute and the eventual satisfaction clearly evident.

And that man is what today is all about: the decision is his, and his alone, and no business of Michael Ashcroft or Rupert Murdoch, neither of whom are on the electoral roll anywhere in the UK. That is how it should be.