I felt tearful after I cast my votes this morning. I can’t help but feel negative – and dread that a Tory government is inevitable.

So in the hope that one person might read this and change their mind, please think about the following when you vote today.

Remember that self-interest serves only a handful of people. Remember our great institutions such as the NHS and the BBC which need to be nurtured and preserved, not dismantled.

Vote against brutal hunting. Vote against allowing Murdoch and his vast media network to decide the political future of our country. Vote against the immediate withdrawal of funds from the economy and the inevitability of another descent into recession. Vote against a party which says they support the vulnerable but will not act to prove it.

Vote for the young and the old. For gay people, straight people, married people, single people.  Parents and grandparents and those who have no children. Vote for children and their futures – for all of them, not just the children of the wealthiest.  Vote for people with cancer and people with mental disorders. Vote for women and their equal place in society.

Vote for progressiveness and inclusiveness. Vote for fairness for all.

Vote however you want, but please just don’t vote Tory.

In the last few days an extraordinary thing has happened.  Gordon Brown has remembered why he is campaigning.  The press have remembered that he (and he alone out of the three main candidates) is a conviction politician – even the right-leaning papers said that this speech on Monday to Citizens UK was one of the best political speeches of this generation.

And so I quote our Prime Minister:

“My father taught me that life is about more than self-interest, that work is about more than self-advancement, that service is about more than self-service.  That happiness is about more than what you earn and own.

“Our shared belief is that wealth must serve more than the wealthy, inequality should not be woven into the fabric of our lives, people of compassion and goodwill should never journey without hope, and no injustice should endure forever”.

This is the man I want to represent me. These are the beliefs which I look for in an enlightened democracy. This is the only way forward for this country.

If you look back through my blog from the last three weeks you will see that the Tories have shown scant regard for the most vulnerable, for the marginalised and helpless in society. But look at Labour’s record:

38,000 more doctors, 80,000 more nurses, 35,000 more teachers, 14,000 more police, minimum wage, paternity/maternity leave, surestart, regional development agencies, child tax credits, quadrupled investment in education, record ALevel/GCSE results, record university students, lowest NHS waiting times in history, free cancer subscriptions, cancer specialist within 2 weeks of diagnosis, reductions of 65million tonnes in carbon emmisions…

Is it really that easy for people to forget all this?

Self-interest has no place in politics – for a country to be healthy, all of its people have to be considered, and there is only one party which promises with any credibility to do so.

Reason #21.  A vote for Labour is a vote for the party which will help the most people.

I’ve not spoken about Education yet, because I’ve been waiting to see if anyone fact-checks the Tories claims about what they can deliver.

Let’s leave aside the “Big Society” hogwash which they’re trying to sell us, let’s even ignore for now the well known failures in the Swedish version of the free school system which the Tories are pledging to adopt.

What I really wanted to know is whether, as has been promised on a number of occassions during the campaign, they will really be able to afford to guarantee no cuts to the education budget.

On Saturday I read an ad placed by the NASUWT – the largest teachers union, which says that the Tories cannot guarantee that education won’t be affected by public sector cuts.  So I’ve done some rummaging, and was surprised to find that not only does the NUSAWT condemn the Tory education policy, but Conservative leaders of Hampshire and Kent County Councils both said that the education policy would not work.

A full description of the NASUWT comments, from the website epolitix.com, is below:

“Commenting on the public exchanges between leading Conservative Councillors and the Tory shadow education spokesperson Michael Gove on the hidden costs of the Tories’ free schools policy, Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union, said:

“I agree entirely with the Conservative leaders of Hampshire and Kent County Councils. The only way that the Tories’ free school policy can be funded, at a time of recession and promised cuts to public services, is by top-slicing the budgets of other schools.

“It is disingenuous of Michael Gove to claim that free schools will be funded from the current DCSF budget.

“Even if there were the ’slack’ he claims, which there isn’t, it has already been spent by the Conservatives several times over during this Campaign.

“We are clearly now in the phase of electioneering where the dire consequences of Conservative education policy are becoming so obvious to the public and their own party members that the Tories are desperately seeking to mask the stark truth until after 6 May.”  ”

Reason #20: The Tories have a risible education policy which they can’t afford, and which has already been proved not to work in other countries.

There are a few personal financial policies which were bandied about in the final leaders debate which I would like to look at.  I’ve done some research on the policies, and looked at the great Channel 4 fact-checker micro-website, to try and draw some conclusions on the Tory economic policy.

Inheritance tax is a very contentious issue, and one which Gordon Brown alluded to repeatedly in the debate last Thursday.

So I would like to look at exactly who it will benefit, and how.  Annually, the 3,000 richest estates in the country (ie those over £1 million) would benefit by an average of £233,000.  That’s £700 million annually taken out of the current tax system and back into the pocket of the richest people in the country. Or, as someone tweeted on Thursday, in response to Cameron’s answer on this topic (”We want to reward those who have worked hard all their lives”) – “we want to reward those who have inherited hard all their lives”.

People have contended that £1 million is not a huge amount when we look at property prices.  Don’t forget however that the threshold is £1 million per person so if we’re looking at couples, that’s a £2 million house we’re considering. In 2008, only 82 houses over £2 million were sold in the whole country – hardly a large proportion of the population, then. We should note too that the current inheritance tax system only affects 15000 estates – roughly the richest 3% of those who died. The Tories will reduce this tax at the “poorest” end of this, but more so at the richest end. Therefore it is undeniably elitist.

And yet at the other end, Cameron will cut tax-credits – money given to the poorest families (those who work though – so the very hard working people Cameron talks about).

Despite his protestations, it is not true that only families earning over £50,000 will have their credits cut. In fact, the Institute of Fiscal studies has shown that all families earning more than the relatively low £40,000 will lose out, and other independent financial analysts say it could be as low as £31,000.

The Tory plans are to take £400 million per year out of tax credits.  Wonder where they’re going to find the other £300 million to benefit their super-rich mates?

Reason #19: the Tories will use their budget to help the superrich and penalise the working poor.

As if we need more reasons why gay people should feel alienated from the neo-nasty party, along comes news that Phillipa Stroud, the woman who has headed up the Tory think-tank, The Centre for Social Justice, is a “Christian” who set up a church which tried to convince its gay members that their sexual preference indicated they were controlled by demons and could be cured of this.

The Centre for Social Justice was set up under Iain Duncan Smith, has had a strong influence on many of DC’s family policies, and claims to have formulated as many as 70 of the current Tory policies being promised to the electorate at the moment.

I’ll leave the final comment on this to Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall.”If Mrs Stroud has been praying to rid Britain of its homosexuality, she clearly hasn’t been praying hard enough. It would be highly regrettable if someone who continued to hold these views held any significant office in government.”

Reason #18 – their social policy is being heavily influenced by a woman who believes that being gay is caused by demonic possession.