Hackney council lost my voting card. Typical.  So I had to write this instead. My timing couldn’t be better. Politics is slowly becoming an increasingly epic version of Lord of the Rings: a spiteful battle in Middle-Earth where taxpayers pay for the orc’s home-furnishings and the hobbit’s hovels.

So when I did something other than turn up at Hackney’s polling station last week, I wasn’t alone. Only 34 per cent of the British electorate bothered. The reasons for this are debatable. Maybe we’ve all finally wised up to the propaganda we’re fed, and uncovered the government as a self-serving rabble that cares more about patio-heaters and porn than people. Or maybe none of us care about the EU, which has become the political equivalent of a holiday in Benidorm.

Whatever the reason for the mass-migration away from voting, Labour’s ineptitude has been funny to watch (if a little humiliating). But its worst result came when the BNP won two council seats. The glee was evident in Nick Griffin’s swastika eyes. As if to try and curb the nation’s rising fears, a YouGov poll revealed that those who voted BNP didn’t do it because they’re racist, but because they feel insecure and let down. But I guess that depends on who or what you call ‘a racist’. Personally, I think ’someone who votes BNP’ is a reasonable definition.

Daniel Hannan MEP (who, incidentally, I have a bit of a crush on) spoke yesterday about Labour’s complete denial of its own collapse. He said voters have done everything they could to express their dissatisfaction with Gordon Brown’s party, ousting Labour in Scotland and every county council. But actually, I think we’ve been lenient. I was sitting in a workingmen’s café at the weekend, chatting up old men for their political opinions, and the general consensus was that “poor old Brown” has been made a media scapegoat. I told them not be fooled, because there’s Machiavellian madness behind the mask of the imbecile.

His party have given up control of every county council, secured the lowest vote share ever recorded by a serving government and lost Wales for the first time since World War I. People, everywhere, are deserting their constituencies in complete disgust at their ‘leader’. And yet it’s Brown and Brown only who can make the decision to step down, unless his cabinet find the balls to bring him down. Is that what the great British democracy is all about?

However clearly anyone expresses how unhappy they are, the floundering Scot and his extensive make-up collection seem to be holding on tight to the delusion that he is, in fact, doing a good job. These are bad times indeed.