If you are reading this, it’s because you are like me, undecided, and feeling disenfranchised from those in power. You are planning to vote, you believe in democracy and yet you feel neither The Labour Party or The Conservative Party or The Liberal Democrat Party speak to you and are really answering your questions to the complex problems you face everyday.

You have watched the Party Leaders debate on TV and you watch the news regularly but you feel the Media coverage is frenzied and it all feels like a PANTOMIME.

Yet you also see the fact that the three major parties seem to talk to the fictional Daily Mail Reader and Middle England, which doesn’t exist and if you are living in Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland, you are not the typical Daily Mail Reader anyway.

Also if you live in London like I do, you are definitely not a Daily Mail Reader and you are worried about how much to the Right most of the three major political parties have shifted to the right of the Political Spectrum.

You are worried that politics in this country will shift further to the right and like the rest of Europe, this country will take on the racist narratives and the anti immigration debates will get even more polarised and that consensus politics will never return to this country.

You are like me a hard working tax paying citizen, tired of austerity and not having any faith in what is being said.

You see that the Leaders of those parties don’t actually talk to the experts on the ground and even if they do they talk to the experts they choose not to the ones that have the solutions.

You as a high performing leader in the field you are in and are very intimately acquainted with the challenges in your industry whether that is medicine, social care, education, prison service, probation service or if you are like me in small business and in  youth justice.

I am in both fields and the first running an online business, I have been for the past six years and as for being in youth justice, that has been for the past twenty seven years.

And watching the debates and the news coverage of the General Election, it seems to me more about sound bites to catch voters attention than actually debating the actual issues.  What I have seen is that voters questions are rarely answered by the three major parties.

However to me the Independent Candidates seem to answer the specific local issues that voters have.  Whether that be Yvonne Ridley up in Newcastle or Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North. Independent Candidates seem to be listening to voters rather than towing the Party Line of the Political Party they belong to.

I have always supported a particular party. I am not going to say which one.

This Election I am not so sure who to vote for because The Conservatives have lost their identity and the Labour Party who started with deep working class roots, seem now to be catering  for Middle England.

Perhaps the future and the future of our democracy and for others like me to feel less disenfranchised and for those of us who do have well thought and well researched and well evidenced solutions for the challenges in our fields is to research carefully, who is standing in our local constituency and vote for the Independent Candidate.

Perhaps it is best to reflect before we vote and use the vote not tactically but as a protest vote that we are not happy with the three main political parties.

By voting for the Independent Candidates, more Independent Candidates will come into Parliament and be able to speak on the issues we care about, be able to offer solutions, real solutions and consensus politics will return rather than this pretend adversarial politics we see.

For me feeling disenfranchised and as someone who votes in each and every election including the Referendum, I voted Remain, I am afraid so many will not vote. For me that is tragic. And I feel by not voting, it is not valuing the vote we have and the democracy we have that others fought so hard for us to get.

For me if you feel disenfranchised, that means you feel you have lost faith in the political parties.

Surely it doesn’t mean you have lost faith in the political process?

I know the two can feel the same but for me they are not necessarily the same.

I am advocating this position which you can reflect on.

To use your vote as a protest and vote for the Independent Candidate that has promised to do certain things in your local area that you feel passionate about and once you have voted, keep that candidate to account and check regularly that they actually deliver what they promise.

After all our local commitments are the ones we live in and we are here to work together to make them a better place.

Perhaps then we will have politicians in Parliament working for us, the people in their communities rather than the big political parties with the big businesses funding them.

For me that is the ONLY strategy that my gut is going with.

It’s time to protest.

Rather than to abstain and quit voting.

What do you think?