The X MAN

We did our civic duty at around 11.30 this morning. For the occasion, I wore the cap brought back from China for me many years ago by an old documentary-maker friend, a proper party cap in navy blue with a red star pinned to it. The only remark it drew was from our neighbour to whom I offered my prepared answer that I was going to vote for the local Maoist candidate. He said that was why he was wearing his red shirt today. As a retired bank manager, however, he would be far more likely to have voted Conservative, I reckon (probably at two minutes past seven).

I showed my voting card to the tellers sat outside the local scouts’ hall and remembered doing telling duty myself as a teenager for the Tories whom, since I grew old enough to vote, I have never supported. The tellers are party volunteers armed with copies of the constituency residents’ poll numbers. When you’ve flashed your card, you are crossed off the list, thereby ensuring that they don’t bother you later in the day in last-minute attempts to get the vote out. Some voters refuse to show their cards in the mistaken belief that this somehow compromises the secrecy of their vote. It doesn’t. Incidentally, I have never seen a Labour teller at a national election in our constituency and today was no different. “Labour can’t win here” is one of the Liberal Democrat slogans and it’s surely true.

Nevertheless, I gave my vote to the Labour candidate. I had intended to vote tactically for the Lib Dem (as I have done in previous national elections here) but the candidate’s most recent mail shot contained a claim about the Tory candidate that I decided to follow up. I went to the Conservative website and, after rather a search, found the passage that the Lib Dem had quoted or, rather, distorted. It was not an opinion expressed by the Tory candidate himself but by a local businessman adding to the comment thread. It was a perfectly reasonable observation too. No doubt the Lib Dem candidate was piqued by some mildly disobliging remarks aimed at him in the same posting. Thinking about the whole episode, the disobliging remarks seemed pretty damned convincing. I decided that I didn’t want to support such a snide person, even if by voting Labour I might be helping to let in the Tory (who, as far as I am aware, has conducted a campaign of utter probity).

I didn’t even know the name of the Labour candidate but happily the ballot paper indicates the party (or indeed non-party) that each candidate represents. It’s not many elections ago that the ballot paper only allowed the candidates’ names. An awful lot of random voting must have gone on and, on a paper that listed the candidates alphabetically by surname, those who happened to come near the top must have been favoured. It’s perhaps surprising that Harold Wilson ever got into parliament.

I noticed that all the candidates gave their home addresses except those for the BNP and the English Democrats who simply stated that they live in the constituency. Is this a lie or do they fear unwelcome visitors? I wonder what the rules are concerning this matter.

The last opinion polls of the campaign contain a slight suggestion of a last-minute return to Labour by a measurable amount of the (apparently numerous) undecided. In my observation of elections down the years, it seems to me that late movement in the opinion polls has been significant because the polls are clearly a bit behind the curve on such movement. But I am probably clutching at straws this time. If, as seems likely, the Lib Dems would have done best if the election had been held a week ago and Labour would do best if the election were this time next week, the Tories will benefit most from the election falling today. As with most things in life, I am hoping for the best but braced for the worst.