Are you a ‘suspicious striver’?

I have always wanted to be part of that tranche of voters identified by pollsters as being crucial in general elections. But it never happens. Every few years arseholes in fashionable spectacles coin some new description of a bunch of people who they believe hold the keys to 10 Downing Street – and every time I feel myself excluded. An entirely absent vagina and an inability to drive a car disqualified me from being either a Worcester Woman or a Mondeo Man. Also, I have an irrational dislike of Worcestershire, and especially Malvern.

Now we are being told that the next general election will be decided by a group of people who comprise the hitherto unheard of subset “suspicious strivers”. I am not one of these, either. I hoped this time around that the crucial voters would be credulous and lazy. Or gullible and bone idle, maybe. I would have fitted right in there. Are people like me of no consequence? And have you ever met anyone who you would characterise as a “suspicious striver”? Isn’t it all just smoke and mirrors?