""Surely the point is to find a party that is closer to your ideals.""

No, sorry mate, but insisting on only voting for a party which shares your ideals is a bit like complaining that there's no work, after going to the job centre and finding they have no openings for neurosurgeons.

We have what we have. At the moment that is two Tory parties, one of which has proved itself the most inept and corrupt in our history, and before anybody gets the wrong idea, that party is New Labour.

Just look at its record.

1. An end to boom and bust?.......The biggest Boom ever, and all on tick, followed by the biggest Bust ever, still ongoing.
2. Interest and inflation rates?.......Inherited the lowest since the sixties, along with scads of dosh in the bank, and frittered the bloody lot away on tinkering with the margins of various problems, without solving any.
3. Gold Reserves?.......Sold off to bolster the excesses of the above, sold off moreover with gold at rock bottom prices.
4. Two Wars?.......Funny how they can always find the money for these, while soldiers die for lack of efficient body armour, helicopters, and vehicles which can protect against IEDs.

Now if all that is close to your ideals, go ahead and vote for them, or vote LibDem, and make certain that any hung parliament will be run by New Labour.

As for me, I'll recognise the possibly that the Conservatives are not the party of the eighties any more, and may do a much better job.

After all, on the evidence, they could hardly do any worse.

Get the mess sorted out and change the way New Labour operates toward the socialist party it pretends to be, then I'll vote according to my ideals, which are socialist in nature.

But I'm not dumb enough to want another five years of misery as a reward for sticking to my ideals.

I have voted Tory purely because there has never been a truly socialist Labour Party in my voting lifetime, and those genuine socialists who have tried to change that have always been pushed aside.

Don T.