I will miss my vote

I feel as if I first took part in a general election even before I was born. My father was the Liberal candidate in Tavistock in 1955 and 1959, and although I was alive only for the latter, featured reading Peter Rabbit in his election address, the two weaved into my infant consciousness. At that time, modernity had not reached rural Devon. Noticing that two neighbouring villages had extremely small Liberal clubs, my father proposed they join forces. ‘Oh no,’ he was told, ‘We were on different sides in the war.’ ‘The war?’ he replied. ‘Surely we were all against the Germans?’ ‘No, the Civil War.’

In all the nine parliamentary elections which he contested, my father had no hope of winning, but although we naturally wanted him to become a Member of Parliament, I do not remember us feeling downhearted. We were taught that the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, which disadvantaged Liberals, was a wicked thing, but we had faith in the integrity of the ballot and the efficacy of public speaking and door-to-door canvassing. It was not until the 1980s that the omnipresence of television finally killed off the political public meeting. Nowadays elections are, in one sense, much more participatory, because anyone can chip in on social media, but in another, less so, because one hardly ever hears a candidate make a proper speech. Ever since Neil Kinnock’s fatal Sheffield rally in 1992, great big meetings with national stars are shunned in case something terrible goes wrong when the world is watching. The art of public oratory, essential to electoral politics at least since 1832, has almost disappeared (though Boris had a last-minute go at it on Tuesday night). At elections, political leaders, notably Sir Ed Davey, are, as children used to be, seen but not heard.