i Editor's Letter: Why it won’t be the i wot won it – our promise to you

“You’ve decided who you’re backing then?” asks Peter Beck. Bexhill i reader Robert Sharkey, meanwhile, levels the accusing finger: “No doubt who the i supports. The dodgy Conservatives and Rupert Murdoch! Get real!” Regular correspondent Mr Sharkey won’t mind me disagreeing in forthright terms once I’ve finished spluttering into my tea: codswallop.

Some newspapers enjoy the sound of their own voice before an election, liking to claim afterwards that they helped to swing the outcome. Not here. This publication revels in refusing to back any political party. No leaders’ faces will be superimposed onto vegetables or farmyard animals, and we won’t tell you how to vote. I hope that’s ok with you. We take pride in striving for political impartiality. You, of course, will judge whether we succeed.

What we will do is light a fire under anything that deserves to go up in flames. We will cut through the noise over the next five weeks to try to give you more facts and less bluster.

Issue by issue, day by day, we will examine exactly what the parties are promising – as well as what they are not saying – and whether they can meet their pledges. We’ll fact-check some of the more exotic claims for you. We will work far away from the Westminster bubble, making a virtue of i’s truly national readership.

That’s because this election won’t be decided by the unions, by big business donors, by newspaper proprietors or by journalists – but by you.

i@independent.co.uk

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