Give me a name!

Over the past three years I’ve been given many; “Tory”, “centrist dad”, “traitor”…and other, less repeatable, ones.

Because I won’t support Corbyn.

Call me what you like…

I’m a husband to an NHS midwife. I see, every week, the stress she is put under by short-staffing, lack of beds and matters such as under-resourced agencies trying to keep the babies of paedophiles and violent offenders safe.

I’m a school governor for a first school. I spend hours of my life balancing budgets and allocating ever-scarcer resources. I know how precious those young lives are, and how many of their parents are finding it harder to make ends meet.

I’m a father to a 17-year-old daughter, who’s heading off to university in September. I would dearly love to her to be able to come out of the experience without a life-time of debt in front of her.

I’m a boss to a team who are predominately young graduates. I see how hard it is for them to get on the property ladder, to even forge a decent career path.

I want all of those things, and more, to change, but the price for that can’t be putting someone who has a 35-year history of associating with the worst elements of the left – the enemies of democracy, the apologists for tyranny, the terrorists, the Antisemites, the homophobes, the bullies and the misogynists – into power.

Call me what you like, I won’t vote for him.

But we want the same things. Lots of other people want them. Other politicians want them. Politicians who don’t have this hideous baggage attached to their name. I don’t need somebody perfect – because politicians are human, and humans make mistakes – but I can’t support somebody who makes the same mistakes over and over again, and then hides from the consequences and the accusations.

Give me a name I can vote for. Give me a name I can be proud to support. Give me a name that I can put my cross next to, knowing that they will genuinely try to make things better for everybody.

Give me a name!