# Still not sure how to vote. In the run up to the last election, I was really excited. The Tories were obviously on the way out. I wasn't completely sure of Blair or Jack Straw, but reckoned that Prescott, Blunkett and Brown more than balanced them up. I was ready to go and put a big fat cross on my ballot for Labour. It was then announced that an incoming Labour government would keep to the Conservative spending plans for the next two years.

The fire went out. What was going to be the point of voting Labour? Had my confidence in Gordon Brown been misplaced? Where was the radicalism? At the polling station, I sequestered myself in the booth. It was me, the ballot paper and that stubby bit of pencil on a piece of string. I stared at the paper. It stared back. I didn't move. Nat shouted at me to get a move on. I folded the paper up and dropped it, unmarked, into the box.

My difficulty this time round is complicated by the fact that I don't know which constituency I'm in now. I'd believed that we were in Birmingham Edgbaston, currently held by Gisela Stuart and one of the last Birmingham seats to go Labour. The BBC's Vote 2001 website, on the other hand, says we're in Birmingham Ladywood, held by Clare Short.

If we're in Ladywood, my decision is easy. I vote for Clare Short as an individual candidate.

Edgbaston though is much more tricky. Gisela Stuart doesn't particularly inspire my personal loyalty, so I'd be voting on a party basis. In which case, I'm back to where I was in '97 - can I feel comfortable voting Labour?

No, just the usual suspects plus Socialist Labour and Pro-European Conservative. [added 22nd May 2001]
Check the date at the top sunshine - there was no Green candidate in 2001. [added 6th May 2005]

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