Up with the lark to do my civic duty this morning before work. And my local polling station, Miles Coverdale Primary School, must be the only polling station in the country nearly named after a member of Whitesnake. Smart.

I love a good vote. I love meeting the volunteers, love studying the ballot paper, love those chunky pencils on a string. My heartbeat definately goes up when I'm standing there in the polling booth but my main pre-occupation is not putting the X in the wrong box: I check about five times that I've lined everything up correctly. I also like seeing where the candidates live. I noted with disdain that the Tory didn't even live in the constituency, he was off in SW18; what's that - Earlsfield? Wimbledon?. So that's one bit of immigration I am happy to control. And despite my reticence over double first names Gary Malcolm our Lib-Dem candidate got my vote. I do believe that Labour's priorities are my priorities, but that's also true of the Lib-Dems and they don't support ID cards or making our armed forces an adjunct of an insane US foreign policy. I don't believe that Blair lied to us about the existence of WMD, I think he lied over the fact that WMD were really the issue. They were a fig-leaf for our support for America's pre-emptive strike logic. I remember at the time watching and thinking that sometime soon Tony is going to say to George W something along the lines "Hey George... I'm a pretty straight guy... so, come on... you know how friends don't let friends drink and drive...well, I think you've had enough unipolar supremacy...". But he didn't, he legitimised Bush and lost my vote.

I'm so hoping to be proved wrong but I think the Tories will do better than people say. Not because a vote for the Lib-dems is a vote for the Tories but because the way our electoral system works, nationwide opinion polls don't really matter. There's only a couple of hundred thousand voters that really make a difference and if they are thinking what Michael Howard is thinking (SHUDDER) they might do well. But then that's Tory thinking - I am right and the rest are scum, so I will try not to go there. Billy Bragg said it best:

I kept the faith and I kept voting
Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand
For theirs is a land with a wall around it
And mine is a faith in my fellow man
...
Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are
Between the wars