THERE are many aspects of our electoral system that are mystifying. For example, whoever wins next Thursday will begin the job on Friday utterly knackered.

Not only has the next prime minister been relentlessly touring the country for weeks on end, but before they assume power they are deliberately kept awake into the early hours of the morning at their local count.

They don’t get a decent night’s rest or a weekend away, they don’t get an apprenticeship, they are just bunged the keys to No 10 and told to get on with it.

Another mystifying aspect is why our campaign is so long. Over the course of the last six weeks, people have tuned in, seen the manifestos, read the headlines, heard the endless arguments, got bored, turned off politics and tuned into the football, got even more bored...

The polls have barely shifted over the course of the campaign; even the headlines have barely changed: it’s all gamblegate and specious claims about tax.

The French president Emmanuel Macron called his snap poll on June 9 and the French are already voting this weekend; Rishi Sunak announced the British election in the rain on May 22 and yet we’ve still got a week to go…

The risk is people become so turned off by this lengthy tedium that they zone out, think the result is a foregone conclusion, conclude from the bickering that all politicians are the same and so they plump to stay in the garden in the sun rather than go out to vote.

Yet the country faces some big decisions and it is absolutely vital that as many people as possible have a say, and so a stake, in our future. Do not let apathy get the better of you on Thursday – please make the little effort required to cast your vote.