Use our voting information to forestall Britain changing into… ONE-PARTY STATE

As Winston Churchill stepped forward towards the microphone, the crowd was in a raucous, restless mood. Having freshly vanquished the Nazis, the prime minister might have expected a warm reception at this vast rally at the Walthamstow greyhound stadium, in one of the last events of the 1945 General Election campaign.

Instead, it was the name of the Labour Party leader that seemed to inspire the throng. ‘We want Attlee! We want Attlee!’ echoed the chant around the arena, drowning out Churchill’s speech.

It was an extraordinary scene, a precursor to the landslide that ushered in Clement Attlee’s radical post-war Labour government.

Needless to say, there has been nothing like it in today’s dull, prosaic contest, which has been light on inspiration and excitement.

Even though Labour are the favourites to win, they have been deliberately opaque on policy, and so have failed to capture the imagination of the public.

Cries of ‘We want Starmer’ have been seldom heard on the campaign trail. Indeed, according to some analysts – and despite its predicted thumping majority – this will be the most unpopular incoming government in modern times.

Starmer’s own approval ratings are dismal: polls by Ipsos and YouGov in May had it at minus 18 and minus 20 points respectively.

Yet, ahead of the 1997 election, Tony Blair achieved plus 18, and David Cameron plus 3 in 2010.

It highlights a fundamental paradox at the heart of this strange election. If the polls are accurate, then the stodgy North London lawyer may be about to preside over a revolution at Westminster that will annihilate the Tories and make Labour the most dominant political force ever seen in this country.

Even the famous Liberal victory of 1906, which established the record for the largest win by a progressive party and reduced the Conservatives to a humiliated rump of just 156 MPs, could well be eclipsed tomorrow. Some forecasts have Rishi Sunak’s party falling as low as just 50 seats.

This wildly unbalanced potential outcome is driven, not by any yearning for Left-wing rule under Starmer, but profound hostility to the Conservative Government which is perceived to have betrayed its promises, especially on tax, crime, living standards and immigration.

Yet, while it is understandable that many voters want to punish the Tories, a democracy needs to be ruled by judgment rather than emotion. Elections should not be exercises in anger management. On the contrary, they are landmarks that decide the fate of the nation.

Whatever Labour pretend, tomorrow’s vote is not a referendum on the past 14 years of Tory rule but a decision as to which party should be in charge for the next five years.

And the choice of Labour would be a disaster for Britain.

It is bitterly ironic that all the Tory policy failures that have so disillusioned the public are precisely the areas where Starmer’s government will be even worse.

His frontbench might now pose as the champions of moderation and fiscal rectitude, but a new Labour government is bound to preside over rising taxes, expanding bureaucracy, higher public debts and growing immigration.

Just as border controls are diluted, so negotiations will reopen for the Brussels empire to bring the UK back into its orbit.

The unions will be emboldened, the woke zealots will step up their bullying. Britain will continue down the dismal path away from the rule of law towards a rule of lawyers.

If anyone has any doubts about how depressing a sweeping Labour triumph will be, just imagine the celebrations inside Whitehall, home to the sclerotic, obstructive civil service blob. Right-on pressure groups will feel all their Christmases have come at once, as will the BBC.

In the final hours of campaigning, Conservative prospects might seem desperate but there are a few glimmers of hope that should encourage Tory activists and voters.

One is that the opinion polls may have the picture badly wrong. After all, they were mistaken over the outcomes of the 2015 and 2017 General Elections, as well as the 2016 European Union referendum.

The post-count inquests into the failure of pollsters to accurately capture Conservative mood in the country are as much a feature of elections as the exit poll. Optimism can also be found in Westminster’s first-past-the-post system by which our democracy has always been governed.

Yes, this process – which bestows strong administration and stability by focusing electoral rewards on the winning party rather than distributing them proportionately on the basis of vote share – could hand Starmer a landslide not at all commensurate with the popular vote.

But in the shallowness of Labour’s support lies the Tories’ escape route.

The Conservative-held marginal seats that Labour is counting on could evaporate dramatically if small numbers of voters change their minds. And that could undoubtedly happen.

According to the respected peer and polling analyst Lord Ashcroft, writing in today’s Mail, almost half of all voters are still undecided, while one in five of those who voted Conservative in 2019 say that they don’t know what they’ll do, or that they will not vote at all.

In practice, that means that a major upset is still possible.

As Rishi Sunak put it yesterday, 132,000 voters in the most tightly fought seats could decide whether the UK has a hung Parliament or Labour majority.

That is why anyone who does not want to hand Sir Keir Starmer untrammelled power should carefully read this guide.

Throughout the country, there are scores of constituencies in which Mail readers can make a real difference.

In a string of Tory battleground seats, like Dunstable, Wyre Forest and North Somerset, the results could be decided by a few hundred votes either way.

In Weston-Super-Mare, just one percentage point separates the Tory and Labour candidates, while the gap is just two points in Dartford.

In other areas, like Ashfield in Nottinghamshire – currently held by ex-Tory Lee Anderson, now with Reform UK – a vote for Nigel Farage’s party may be the best way of hitting Labour. The result is anything but settled.

A ‘supermajority’ for Labour –where Starmer could absurdly gain unprecedented power in the Commons on the back of an even smaller share of the vote than Jeremy Corbyn won in 2017 – will be anything but super.

At the very least, in our two-party system, every government – especially one that will be as doctrinaire as Starmer’s – needs a powerful opposition.

But readers should take heart because, with judicious use of your vote, you can not only install a credible counterweight to Labour in the Commons, but you can stop this Starmergeddon nightmare from unfolding in the first place.