Star comment: The most important vote for a generation

Certain members of the Labour Party, particularly the shadow chancellor John McDonnell and erstwhile shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, seem unfit for high office. Meanwhile the Conservatives have stumbled their way from one PR disaster to another in what should have been a straightforward campaign.

With the National Insurance increase U-turn and the so-called dementia tax, the Tories’ message has not been clear or coherent. It also appears to have been a drain on Theresa May who started the campaign so sure-footed but now seems less and less confident as each opinion poll passes.

The country today faces a stark choice: a Labour government, most likely propped up by the Scottish Nationalists, proposing a return to tax and spend economics or a majority Conservative government that wants Britain to live within its means and stand on its own two feet as we leave the EU.

Any deal between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon is likely to be a turbulent and unpredictable one, underpinned by demands for a second Scottish independence referendum with England’s interests held to ransom.

Such an arrangement would consign the Labour movement to electoral oblivion for a generation. It is fair to say that the Conservatives’ economic performance has been steady rather than spectacular. Questions will be asked over Chancellor Philip Hammond’s fiscal strategy, which has seen an embarrassing climbdown on tax rates and the party get itself in a mess over means-testing the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, regardless of their economic merits.

Why the party decided to target well-off pensioners, who make up much of its core support, remains unclear. Whoever devised that policy needs to take a long hard look at themselves in the inevitable inquest.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats with their opportunist leader Tim Farron have shamelessly pursued hard-core Remainers with complete disregard for democracy. Tim Farron, like Nick Clegg before him, is abandoning his political principles with his thinly-disguised contempt for a huge proportion of the voting public. As with forming the coalition in 2010, the Lib Dems are demonstrating that the only thing they stand for is themselves.

And what of UKIP? Having achieved Brexit and Nigel Farage exiting the political arena, the party lacks purpose and the destination of its votes could be pivotal.Will former UKIP voters lend their support to Theresa May in her battle with Brussels? Or will they continue with what would be little more than a protest vote?

In truth, there is an element of sympathy for hard-working and well respected MPs of any party who, just two years after being elected, face being defeated on the basis of their leaders’ poor performances.

As ever, one of the great features of British politics is its unpredictability.

Few would have believed Labour was in with a chance when this election was called in what now seems like an eternity ago.

Somehow Jeremy Corbyn’s personality seems to have blinded some of the electorate to his radical far-left policies.

By no means is it certain that Theresa May will be Prime Minister this time tomorrow.

To that end she was entirely correct to describe it as the most important General Election in her lifetime. It will determine the course this country takes as it sets about laying the foundations of a bold new era after Brexit.

You have a choice whether to acknowledge the Conservatives’ attempts to rescue the economy with record levels of employment and low interest rates or whether to gamble on Labour with its ‘all things to all men’ manifesto.

Yet the most important thing is for everyone – no matter what age, colour, or creed – to exercise their democratic right to vote.

‘One person, one vote’ in this country means everybody gets the same chance to influence the result – that’s why it is not just your right to use that vote today, but your responsibility too.