Don’t vote Tory because you don’t like Jeremy Corbyn – nobody is asking you to go on holiday with him

In this general election there are many constituencies where people who want to stop the PM are in a strong majority, but rather than unite behind one candidate that will beat him they still prefer to fight each other

Some people in this election make the reasonable point that, “I’m not voting, because while I am worried the NHS will be offered to Donald Trump, and concerned about the country being run by a compulsive-lying megalomaniac sociopath, I just don’t like Jeremy Corbyn.”

This makes sense – as long as there’s a procedure that, if you don’t vote, you’re then visited by a man from the council who says: “As you don’t appear to like the main candidates for prime minister, we’d like to ask who you would choose instead. I’m told you do like Stacy Solomon. Will she do?”

Even so, while you may find Boris Johnson distasteful, it’s understandable if you’re uneasy about voting for Corbyn, if he makes you feel queasy – as long as the rules for the election are that the winner comes with you on holiday. Then it would be fair to say you’d like to cut the number of people who rely on foodbanks, but you don’t want him skulking about on the beach. Because when it’s his turn to buy the ice creams, he’d bring back raw beetroot from his allotment in a cornet.

This has to be stated, because it’s likely that The Sun’s front page on election day will read like this: “Corbyn to move in with you if he wins! A secret document found yesterday in a bush revealed that, if Labour wins the election, the new prime minister will slouch across your settee and whenever you have custard it will have bits of his beard in it, which he won’t notice because he’ll be reading a book about the Peasants’ Revolt. Then, when you want to watch Strictly Come Dancing, he’ll turn over to a channel showing folk songs about the majestic nature of the oxen in Cuba, and if you have a box of Quality Street for Christmas, he’ll steal them and post them to the IRA.”

The trouble is, if Johnson wins, it will be difficult to stop him trashing the place. He’s still on course to take us out of the EU without a deal, he’s planning to rewrite the constitution so the law can’t be used to prevent anything he wants, he wants to change the rules on voting to bar vast numbers of the poor and young. But not to worry, because you’ll be able to console yourself you didn’t bother voting against him as “Jeremy Corbyn gave me the collywobbles. It was something about his glasses”.

Because this isn’t a normal Conservative Party. This is a Conservative Party too foul for Michael Heseltine and Kenneth Clarke, who were leading figures under Margaret Thatcher. But it is crazy enough for several Brexit Party candidates, who are resigning to support Boris Johnson. It’s like old leaders of Isis leaving because “this new lot are a bit TOO Islamic”.

We now have members of the Democratic Unionist Party making speeches that go: “WE wish eternal FIRE upon the LOCUSTS OF SATAN that threaten the HOLY BORDER that separates our blessed NORTHERN IRELAND from the PAPIST DEVILRY of the Republic. But Johnson’s party is too dingbat even for US.”

So perhaps this is not the time to say: “I don’t think I can vote for my local Labour candidate, as I disagree with him about the use of VAR for offside.”

You might think “I won’t vote for Corbyn because he won’t say he’s against Brexit”, and yes, the Labour leader’s stance on this may be frustrating. But the party is committed to a Final Say referendum, in which most leading Labour people will support Remain. So you could not bother to vote and watch Johnson pass his EU Withdrawal Bill in a few weeks, while a huge chunk of his party still hopes to leave with no deal. Or you can vote for a party committed to a referendum, in which most leading Labour people will support Remain.

If you’re a Remainer, this is a difficult choice – much like if you’re invited to two Christmas parties on the same night by different neighbours, and you have to go to one or the other. At one they promise to douse you in petrol and set you on fire, and in the other they say they will only set you on fire if you ask them to. You might as well let everyone else decide for you, as they’re both as bad as each other.

One marvellous side to this election is that, if everyone terrified of Johnson’s gang voted against him, he’d be decisively beaten. But because of our electoral system his opponents are tangled in such a magnificent way that this becomes more difficult. So there are many constituencies where people who want to stop him are in a strong majority, but rather than unite behind one candidate that will beat him, they prefer to fight each other.

In history, this has always proved a successful strategy. The most powerful armies have usually been those that, at the decisive moment of battle, split into three groups and start firing at themselves.

But a Tory win would mean we’ll be governed by a mob so deranged it includes Jacob Rees-Mogg as if he’s normal, when he should only be seen in an hallucination scene from a film made in the 1950s about the dangers of taking heroin.

But never mind, because as the last maternity clinic is sold off to Exxon Mobil, and a candidate who split the anti-Johnson vote in an area where they couldn’t win went up from 7.8 per cent to 8.2 per cent – so that’s the main thing.

I’m sure there were people in Germany in 1933, who said: “I can’t stand Hitler, but I’m not keen on this other bloke either, so I’m going to either not vote, or vote for Klaus Autobahn, who can’t win but I agree with his position on wind farms.”

And I bet they feel a bit silly now.