I voted for Blair twice but I can't stomach Starmer

'This election isn't such a foregone conclusion as many make out'

- Ross Clark

THIS year's General Election campaign, beginning as it does with an enormous poll lead for Labour, will have echoes of 1997 for many people. But not for me. I voted for Tony Blair twice that year and again in 2001. But, sorry, I can't summon the least enthusiasm for voting for Sir Keir Starmer.

Some might argue this is a clear case of my becoming more conservative in middle age I was 30 in 1997, and 57 now but that isn't the case.

I had been eligible to vote in two prior elections and didn't find voting for Labour a remotely attractive proposition either time.

In some ways, I have since become more left-wing - I am more suspicious of big business now and I believe the housing market has desperately failed young people. But I never have voted for a high-tax Labour party in hock to the unions.

Tony Blair, however, promised something very different, and initially stuck to it. He combined the best of Conservative policies an enterprise economy and, in the early days, fiscal responsibility - with a promise to do as Mrs Thatcher and John Major had often failed to do: ensure that those less fortunate would not be left behind.