I said at the start that I'm not going to vote - and it's not out of apathy. I'm actually very enthusiastic about not voting.

From my new standpoint of disinterested observer, I've begun to see things which, if I had been involved and partisan, I might not have noticed.

For instance, how dull and dreary the election campaign is. The politicians and their accomplices in the media talk as if they think people are interested. They're not. But what about those who do intend to cast their vote? What's in it for them? I would say nothing but a lot of disappointment because there's nothing to choose among the parties.

Suppose you are a socialist. You'll be looking for more support for the trades unions and massive subsidies for the traditional industries. A generous rise in the state pension. You won't get any of these things.

Instead, you'll have to stand by and see New Labour do nothing to save Rover or any other provider of industrial jobs. The Labour government of 1945-1950 would have poured money into it like gallons of warm beer. There'll be no taxing the rich until the pips squeak. And Mr Blair will fight just as many "new imperial" wars as he thinks fit.

Worse, you might be a Tory. Your cause is lost altogether, I'm afraid. There will be no significant tax cuts and certainly no scrapping of the iniquitous inheritance tax. Rapists and violent thieves will not be caught - and even the few who are will not be locked away for long periods. Although murders have increased spectacularly since the death penalty was abolished in 1965, there will be no bill for its return. The Conservative Party will continue - following Mrs Thatcher and Mr Major - to sign away our national independence to the EU dictatorship.

Even Liberals expect a grand gesture, however futile. I haven't heard a word of their usual squeals about election by proportional representation. There has been no gush of progressivist sentimentality for homosexual marriage. And no brave policy announcement saying that the party will decriminalise all drugs and so give people the freedom to kill themselves by their narcotic of choice. I haven't even heard much about the promotion of mass abortion and euthanasia. A pity - we could always count on the Liberals to press upon us an infinite range of choice in the means of procuring death. Perhaps they think the other parties have taken us far enough down this road of permissive murder and suicide.

It's going to be a phoney election preceded by a phoney campaign. It's an insult to the voting population. All the parties know that violent crime is out of control, that the streets are hideously infested with drug-soaked yobs, that the schools are academies of ignorance and that billions are being wasted on a health service which just doesn't work. But none has the courage to break cover and strike out with truly radical policies of left, right or centre to put things right.

You know, as polling day draws near, I think I might be beguiled into casting my vote after all. In the next parish there's a candidate for the Monster Raving Loony Party and I hear tell he has a marvellous new policy for the extraction of moonbeams from cucumbers.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.