Last week, as I turned over various ideas for election-related blog posts (some half-written, others existing only in my head), I wondered how on earth I was going to decide how to vote.  Attempting to optimise the multi-dimensional array of policies, parties, prime ministers and parliamentary representatives was far too complicated a conundrum for my brain to solve.  If the best policy for one topic is a combination of ideas from two parties, how should I vote?  If one party has the best policy for one topic but another party has the best policy for a different topic, how should I vote?  If one party has the best policies overall, but the leader of another party would make the best prime minister, how should I vote?  If the leader of one party would make the best prime minister, but the candidate for another party would make the best MP, how should I vote?

Whilst all these questions were churning around in my mind, one of those thoughts emerged – as they do from time to time – from which emanated calm.  There is a truth that cuts through all of the questions:  a truth that I realise I have already written about.  I must vote according to the way our electoral system is designed.  The only vote I can make is for the candidate that I believe is best equipped to represent my constituency as its MP.

Theresa May is right about one thing:  it is about trust.  However, it is not about my trust in Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn.  It is about my trust in my MP.  That is how a parliamentary democracy works.  Looking back to the birthplace of democracy, all male citizens of the smallish city-state of Athens could speak and vote to determine their laws, although not all did.  In a country of 65 million people (electorate of 46 million people) that isn’t practical.  Therefore, each constituency elects an MP to represent it in parliament.  This person is entrusted with the job of representing the people of their constituency by performing the tasks of running the country that we cannot all do.  This is a huge trust that we place in them and a demanding job that we ask them to do.  The electorate in my constituency is 65,000 people.  Representing the views of that many people cannot be easy.  They can’t do it if they don’t make the effort to understand our views.  They can’t do it we don’t make the effort to explain our views.

I have written elsewhere of my concerns about tactical voting, with specific reference to the practice of voting for a second choice party in order to stop the candidate of a particular party from winning.  On reflection, I would widen the definition of tactical voting:  any vote that is based on policies, party or prime minister is tactical.  The allures of tactical voting are certainty and power.  The certainty is false:  however much we think we know what the consequences of our vote will be, the future is always uncertain.  As for power:  who am I to expect to directly shape the government of 65 million people?  I treasure my vote and try to use it wisely, yet it is but a grain of sand on a beach.  It is enough for me to make my choice as truthfully as I can and let the national picture sort itself out.

A couple of weeks ago, when considering the impact of powerful political parties on our system of government, I wrote, “This all means that political parties have turned our representatives in the nation’s parliament into their representatives in our constituencies.”  How did this happen?  When we let it.  We can’t (as I have been doing) complain that the system is broken, if we don’t use that system in the way in which it was designed to work.  Let’s stop playing the game by the warped rules of the political parties.  Let’s take control of our MPs back from the political parties.  Only then can we give our MPs our trust.  Only then can our MPs be our representatives.  Vote person, not party.