I will not be frightened into voting for Labour

There are other choices, other parties which stand for decent values and international law. For me it is the Lib Dems

This is an extraordinarily important election, as pivotal as the 1997 poll which swept into power a young Tony Blair and his bright cohorts who promised so much. We understood what we were voting for then. For some, New Labour offered an escape from the yoke of interminable Tory rule, for others it was the party's optimism, creativity, modernity and the intellectual base of policies which had been honed during the chastening years in opposition. Power first squandered then supplanted the idealism and potential of New Labour.

This is an extraordinarily important election, as pivotal as the 1997 poll which swept into power a young Tony Blair and his bright cohorts who promised so much. We understood what we were voting for then. For some, New Labour offered an escape from the yoke of interminable Tory rule, for others it was the party's optimism, creativity, modernity and the intellectual base of policies which had been honed during the chastening years in opposition. Power first squandered then supplanted the idealism and potential of New Labour.

When they had an unbeatable majority in parliament and the approval of the masses, New Labour could have, but didn't, erase the legacy of the Iron Lady. Instead it embraced Thatcherism, clothing it in trendy clothes and smart talk. The two main parties today are locked in a nefarious embrace on many key policies and beliefs which once divided the centre, left and right.

The Conservatives and New Labour are equally identified with privileging big business, the worship of money and the moneyed, the cruel treatment of migrants and asylum-seekers, the adulation of Empire, the drive to dominate countries through force, double standards in foreign policy, warmongering and the sale of arms, state-led supremacist values and the mingiest instincts of Middle Englanders. If there are minute distinctions, they are so slight that the perfect sighted could miss them in the small print.

All that is left now is the politics of terror. The Tories want us to believe that, without them, Gypsy and/or refugee rapists on vast benefits (millions of them apparently) will sneak into our homes, rob us, violate our innocent children and then walk free while the custodians of justice imprison decent citizens who try to protect their families and properties with cricket bats. New Labour messages are fearful too, more so. If they are not elected, international terrorists will create ever more havoc, the Tories will get in and it will be the fault of self-indulgent traitors who abstain or vote for the Liberal Democrats.

A letter published in the weekend papers by famous folk - Jo Brand, Timothy West, Richard Wilson, Prunella Scales, Diarmuid Gavin and others - tried to get the deserters to come back: "We believe that Britain is a better and fairer country than it was in 1997 and that the country needs to keep going in the same direction of modernisation and investment. We are alarmed at the prospect of a return to a Tory government that cannot be trusted on the economy or with public services."

To give their letter extra powers of persuasion, the signatories confessed they opposed the war and are still "angry" with Tony Blair. If I was cynical I would suggest that this letter was drafted with the help of a selfless New Labour spin doctor.

How disheartening that in this, a mature, educated nation, progressive people are imprisoned in this idea that the only choice is New Labour, however regressive and authoritarian it gets. This is what happens in one-party states; we are a one-party state unless we can gather courage and deliver a hung parliament to renew our fragile and threatened democracy.

There are, of course, respectable left-wing reasons for voting for New Labour. A number of commendable policies have started to deliver change. The Tories would never knowingly associate themselves with these. They include combating child poverty, promoting children's rights, some (concealed) re-distributive measures, anti-racist legislation, a stated commitment to the founding doctrines of the welfare state (though this becomes dubitable as the Private Finance Initiative juggernaut drives through the public services) and the future of Africa.

But then good came out of the Thatcher years too. Economic liberalisation freed up individuals to make their own destinies as self-employed workers. Vietnamese refugees escaping Communism were welcomed with exceptional goodwill because of Margaret Thatcher's commitment to them and her positive leadership which brought on side the most rabid anti-immigrant newspaper editors.

Her ministers were not all abject and easy to dominate. The big cats like Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine asserted themselves. And it was in 1979, under Mrs Thatcher, that the House of Commons Select Committee network was set up, the most significant parliamentary development of our time.

Neither of the main parties seems to be emphasising these real achievements. Instead, as the gap between them narrows, their speeches and posters and now election beer mats (to reach the soaring number of binge drinkers in our society) seem to be getting more coarse and populist, peddling menace and mendacity. The enemies of our lives multiply everyday, as we are instructed by livid electioneering politicians to dread and hate asylum-seekers, terrorists, feral children ... and to trust them to rid us of these perils.

Well this elector refuses to be bullied or panicked into handing over her precious vote either to Labour or to the Howardian Conservatives. Nor do I submit to that loathsome demand that we should keep the war out of this election.

For many, the war is the election; that and the anti-terror travesties pushed through by this government.

Billions of pounds have been misused to kill innocents in Iraq and we are not even trusted to be told the truth of just how many were sacrificed without their consent. Commentators who now proclaim that this war and Blair's "bravery" is leading to a swell of democracy in the Middle East are either dolts or knaves. As US control of that region grows, real democratic energy will be drained away to be replaced by a new gang of elected slaves. Ten thousand prisoners, torture, unlawful arrests, collective punishments, daily violence, a population numbed by decades of oppression and want - this is the "happy" Iraq we have delivered.

Meanwhile mercenary companies - some chaired by former Tory ministers - have doubled their revenues and thanks to this adventure profits are doing very well, too, for our defence industries. Oil? Well, we wait to be informed on those yields and the special deals we will be given for our support of Bush. So, yes, though it has been moving to witness the defiant rush to the polls in Iraq, there is still a long road out of hell for Iraqis.

Adlai Stevenson, the US statesman, said in 1952 when he won the Democratic nomination: "Better we lose the election than mislead the people." Today, half a century later, we are asked unequivocally to re-elect a Prime Minister who not only misled his people again and again but who is still doing it, refusing to let us know the truth of what is happening in Iraq and why. Howard is complicit in this folly and deserves only contempt. Using fear again as a weapon, New Labour has set about demolishing legal, civil and human rights in Britain and now they want us to thank them for this vandalism by voting them back in.

There are other choices, other parties which stand for decent values and international law. For me it is the Liberal Democrats who, I hope, will get many more seats and bring honour back into the Commons. What's more, they don't scare me, unlike the monstrous New Labour apparatchiks and the voraciously hungry New Conservatives.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk