There are two good things to be said about the current uninspiring lightweight bout between Mr Sunak and that parfit gentil knight Sir Keir Starmer. 

First, it is a marked improvement on the suicidally depressing choice between the forgetful geriatric Democrat and the felonious narcissist Republican across the Atlantic. 

And secondly — but even more importantly — it is a great deal better than being offered no choice at all.

You might ask whether your vote really matters. After all, for 14 years a nominally Conservative government has failed to hold back the tide of crazed wokery that has swept through our universities and the public sector. Let alone to stop the boats, fill the potholes or make the NHS any less in need of being ‘saved’.

On which evidence, Sir Keir may well find that the levers of power he is so looking forward to exercising are not actually connected to anything at all.

We shall no doubt find out on July 5.

In the meantime, though, let us consider a branch of government in which democracy is singularly lacking. Yes, in England. Not in the great dictatorships across the seas, where even Putin, Xi and Kim consider it prudent to go through the sham of achieving landslide electoral approval.

I refer to the parish council. An institution most of us know perhaps only through the chuntering dimwits of The Vicar of Dibley* or the Covid-constrained Zoom meeting of the subsequently disbanded Handforth council in Cheshire, at which it was famously contended that its host Jackie Weaver had ‘no authority here’.

An event which gained Ms Weaver a well-deserved 15 minutes of fame, extending even to a guest appearance on The Archers, but rather less amusingly landed taxpayers with an £85,000 bill for the subsequent inquest into what had gone wrong.

In my own Northumberland neighbourhood of Whittingham, Callaly & Alnham, there are 12 councillors who have all gained their places through co-option. In the 36 years I have lived there, I do not recall ever being given a chance to vote for any of them.

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And why should I or anyone else care? The council adds a modest precept to residents’ council tax bills in return for doing … no one really knows what.

And yet it has something rather important in its purview: the development — or otherwise — of a Neighbourhood Plan.

In an outstandingly beautiful rural area, where most residents are inclined to be NIMBYs if not BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone), a Neighbourhood Plan seems a good way of focusing attention on the reality that the area cannot be preserved in aspic. 

And, since some forms of development are inevitable, it is surely prudent for the electorate to agree on how, where and when they would least object to its taking place.

When a Neighbourhood Plan was first proposed last year the local reaction at a public meeting was highly positive, and the parish council duly authorised the necessary work to go ahead.

But to judge from the motion proposed at their last meeting on May 21, this is an initiative some of them at least have now come deeply to regret.

It’s hard to see why, given that the Neighbourhood Plan is rooted in local consultation and would require approval in a referendum before it could be adopted.

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True, on recent UK evidence, that might well result in a near deadlock and endless demands for a re-run of the vote. 

But then again, maybe not.

With ‘builder not a blocker’ Sir Keir looking overwhelmingly likely to release the pent-up demand for countryside destruction in the coming weeks, it seems more important than ever to establish some parameters on what we would all like to see in our own patch.

The unelected council usually goes about its work quietly. Its doors are not closed, but it is rare for anyone to bother to open them and peer in. Until the last meeting, when so many concerned locals pitched up that there was standing room only, and the fatal motion to scrap the Neighbourhood Plan was not carried.

It will almost certainly be coming up for discussion again at the next meeting on June 18. So if you happen to live in one of the three parishes the council covers (and the clue here is in its name), you might like to pop along to Whittingham Memorial Hall at 7pm and see how it all goes.

As you might like to trek to your local polling station on July 4 — approved photo ID in hand — to cast a vote for your least unfavoured candidate in the general election.

Tempting though it is to scrawl ‘NONE OF THE ABOVE’ across your ballot paper, it behoves us all to remember Churchill’s verdict that ‘democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’

Who knows, one day we might even get around to trying it at our parish council.

* Yes, I am well aware that the meetings depicted in Dibley were of the Parochial Church Council, which is something completely different, but I believe they called it the parish council in the interests of simplicity (presumably the viewers’).