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Think of the people who will be happy on Friday morning if all goes badly and the Conservatives win. David Cameron. Goldman Sachs. Rupert Murdoch. Paul Dacre. George Osborne. Cameron’s election chief Lynton Crosby, one of whose firms stands to make vast profits from privatised NHS contracts. God forgive me for writing the foul name of the lying liar himself, Iain Duncan Smith.

Dear sweet Jesus, would you want to be a part of anything that makes Iain Duncan Smith smile?

I’m pretty confident that come Thursday, people will find themselves alone in a ballot box, and, just as in the 1980s, once they’ve made very very sure that nobody can see the terrible thing they are about to do, they will vote Tory.

Because they believe the lies. Because it’s easier to believe lies than fight for change. They believe Labour caused the economic crisis, though the fact is that it was American and City bank speculation. They believe Labour will borrow more money, though the fact is that the Tories have borrowed far more than Labour did or than they said they would. They believe the economy must be made to balance because the economy is like running a household, though nothing could be further from the truth. They believe that anything other than the Tories permits scrounging dole cheats to steal their money, though unemployment benefits make up just a tiny percentage of the welfare budget. Most of all, they believe that the best way to protect what they have, their own little house and shiny car and tiny pension, the best way to keep it safe from the immigrants and dole cheats, is to vote Tory. They have been conquered: the relentless pressure of their own jealous greed allied to the barrage of nonsense peddled each day by the anaesthetising media has defeated them utterly. They watch soccer and coo over Royal princesses – anything but think. Any shred of electoral decency is but a distant memory. They believe the best way to deal with the poor, disabled and sick is to hurt them. Hurt them lots.

Come on. Don’t be like that. Don’t be a tiny-minded little Englander, turning your back on each other and the world. Don’t vote for petty cruelty. Don’t vote for a party that puts its own rich white male friends before the welfare of the nation. Vote for the common good. Be big. Say: ‘I’m not going to waste a single second more of my life doing what the right-wing media tells me to do and focusing my gaze on the poorest and weakest around me, because they, poor buggers, have nothing I would want or of which I should be jealous. I’m going to be big, and be bright, and from now on I’m gong to focus on the opposite end of the spectrum.’

The employers like Newcastle Utd owner Mike Ashley paying staff on zero hours contracts, just like the employers of the 1930s with the power to pick the people whose families will eat today, and the hard heart to turn away the people whose children will go hungry.

The tax avoiders.

The profiteering utilities, whose board members make millions while elderly pensioners shiver.

The lobbyists, who buy peerages for the clients who donate most to the Conservative Party.

The businessmen who wine and dine Osborne and Cameron and then sign the contracts for NHS services.

The media that tells you what to do – Murdoch, whose journalists had no scruple; Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere, whose tax affairs might give an insight into just how much he loves Britain; the Telegraph’s banking Barclay Brothers.

Focus on them. Why should people who chiselled their way to, or merely inherited, great wealth have any say in our lives together? Does money give them the right? Does money give business owners the right to tell us how to vote in a letter dutifully printed by the Telegraph, but only after – as Twitter has proved – only after it was approved by Tory Central Office, from whence it came?

Make them change. Aim for a country where it’s not on the lunatic fringe to suggest that we help the weakest, that we keep public services as just that, rather than privately-owned businesses delivering mullions to the few and sub-standard service to the millions; where we don’t penalise poor people who have a spare bedroom with the bedroom tax yet view the idea of a mansion tax on the wealthiest as wrong. Where we don’t listen to people whose idea of democracy is to threaten to leave if things don’t turn out as they require.

Come on. It’s important. Don’t be an idiot and mouth the tired cliche ‘they’re all the same’. They’re not. The Greens believe in nationalising public utilities. Labour will introduce price rise caps in the utilities and rent caps on profiteering landlords who pocket the housing benefit paid to them by the welfare state.

Even if you think ‘they’re all the same’ – and forgive you for being an idiot who’s not paying attention if you do – you have no right to shrug your shoulders because of it. Take part! Get involved. Ask questions., Hold to account. Vote, for fuck’s sake. Vote. My grandparents risked their lives for you, you lazy slow-witted bastard. Vote.

Having made the decision to vote, have a long hard look at yourself and think of the country you live in. It was won for freedom by brave men and women putting the common good before personal gain, before even their lives in many cases. Everything you enjoy was won for you by good men and women putting the common good before ease and laziness, campaigning for universal suffrage, safety in the workplace, decent working hours, holidays, pensions, health care, education. Every single one of the things you need and value the most was won for you by people who put the common good before the individual gain, often at great risk. Every single one.

So. Honour your history. Honour your forebears. Be grateful for all that you have. And vote the best way you can find to keep the petty-minded, bullying, bragging, swilling greed-mongers out. In Cornwall, that means voting Liberal Democrat. Do it. Anything other than the Conservatives represents a starting point. As long as this country has the Conservatives campaigning to enable their business backers to put the free market above the common good, to put personal gain above universal possibility, this country can never be decent and fair, it can never put human kindness above money, it can never bring up our children to care and share. Yes, the other parties will make mistakes and do wrong things and break promises, yes, they will: but they at least start from a point of putting people first. That counts for a lot.

On Thursday, don’t do the sneaky, sordid, selfish thing. Look around you at this beautiful world and say to yourself: ‘I am on the side of right against wrong, and it is right to care for each other. It’s wrong to bully people and deify wealth. I’m going to do something right today.’

I very much fear there won’t be enough of us; there certainly won’t be in southern England, where the tiny jealous minds hold sway and huddle protectively around their pathetic possessions as if they matter. I very much fear that Milliband’s cowardly dismissal of the SNP’s sensible proposal for a system that would lock the Tories out for ever will come back to haunt those of us who believe in social justice. I very much fear that on Friday, not for the first time, I will look around me at each passing face and wonder ‘Did you do this terrible thing’ and hate what passes for humanity anew.

But today, with a few days to go, there’s still hope, misplaced but oh so wild. A hung Parliament may even bring the democratic justice of proportional representation, which really would do what all the disillusioned want done and change the present corrupt system.

Let’s hope. Brothers and sisters. Let us hope.