Vote Today - Make It Count

And so the General Election campaign, which seems to have been going on for most of the year, and even before the end of the last, has come to a close and it is time for the votes to be cast. I urge anyone and everyone to exercise that right today. Far be it from me to tell readers of this blog how they should vote: that is your choice, and yours alone. What I will do is tell what informs my choice, and why this isn’t just any old election.

Who's going to be in power here after today?

The foreign and non-dom billionaires who run most of the UK’s press want you to vote to allow their Wild West Show to go on unhindered. They want to be able to carry on lionising the overmonied, the tax dodgers, the unprincipled exploiters of the poor, to protect the already strong against the weak. At the same time, they want the freedom to demonise the disabled, ethnic minorities, the LGBT community, the single parents.

Five more years of this? No way

In pursuit of this approach, the run-up to the election has been accompanied by a tsunami of highly personal abuse aimed at anyone unwilling to subscribe to the idea of letting the press, and their business pals, please themselves. Anyone not signed up to the idea of a majority Tory Government in the UK has been targeted. Those who commit to following through on the Leveson proposals have been subjected to particular unpleasantness.

Leave them in their island retreat

Only one party has committed to allow the press to carry on as before, and that is the Tories. That means more bad behaviour, more lack of accountability, more ordinary people being treated as so much collateral damage. There are good people in the Tory Party, but there are also venal and corrupt politicians - along with those who are prepared to turn a blind eye and allow the corruption to continue. They are not worth anyone’s vote.

Tell this c*** to f*** right off

The Tories are in the press’ pocket; thus they get an easy ride. Their Coalition partners, the Lib Dems, are not, and the amount of personal abuse that has rained down on them, from Nick Clegg and wife Miriam González Durántez to MPs and activists, is bang out of order. Those who have been well served by Lib Dem MPs should have no problem in voting for that party. They did the right thing, as they saw it, in 2010. Theirs is no disgrace.

This potential PM has committed himself ...

The target of most press vilification, Ed Miliband, has committed himself to the cause of press victims. He has shown leadership where Cameron has vacillated. It should surprise no-one: while the young Miliband was fighting for fair student rents, Cameron was dressing up and trashing restaurants. This is the difference between someone who wants to make things better, and someone who rather thinks he’d be a good Prime Minister.

... to following up on his good work

Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay Brothers, Paul Dacre, Richard Desmond, and their supporting cast of grovelling sycophants, want you to vote as they order you. Well, f*** that for a game of conkers. Miliband is the one potential PM who owes these SOBs nothing. He has committed himself to doing the bidding solely of those who elect him and his fellow Labour MPs. That commitment should be applauded.

Make a difference today. Show the right-wing press where they can stick their orders.