I was lucky, I got that hail Mary pass into a comfortable upbringing. We weren’t crazy-rich, I never drove a Corvette and neither did my brother, but we didn’t have to worry about leaving in the dark so the neighbours did not see us get evicted.

I struck out on my own in my early twenties, tried to “do it on my own” without the benefits of privilege (or so I thought, really it was just without the money safety-net, my white male-ness was not something I could lay aside), so even though I have had to make the decision “food or electricity” I only had to make it or make the other decision “run away home”. I lasted two years; I cannot imagine what it’s like to live like that with no escape route, no matter how hard I try, and I know it. All I did was caught a glimpse of it, and that was enough for me to know that I could never look at myself in the mirror and vote Conservative, because you are right, theirs is the politics of blame, of exclusion, of privilege and “we protect our own”. The very least I can do with my privilege is try to make life a little easier, maybe a lot easier, for people who were not so lucky in terms of the families that they were born into. There but for a chance of Fate, go I — how does anyone behave with such grasping selfishness as to ignore that?

I wish I could vote in the US in November, I would vote Democrat even though I am still distraught that Bernie Sanders is not the nominee, and when people ask me why anyone should care, especially people like me who are not American, who don’t live in America, I say this:

If we allow a major World power, perhaps the World’s last Super Power, to be represented on the World Stage by a misogynist, racist, opportunist huckster who has no love in his heart for anyone but himself, then we are living in a World where decency has no value, and I for one cannot bear that.

Good luck to you all in November, I will still be a true friend to your great country no matter what, but I hope for happier times than what __will__ follow should Donald Trump become your President.