A political voice that really needs to be heard

Last year, Rebecca’s husband Nick was hit by a car and seriously injured. Here, in one of a series of columns, she writes about the aftermath of his accident

For all the things that my family argued about over the kitchen table (hair dye, the merits of body piercing, how Kelly’s cigarettes ended up in my school bag), politics wasn’t one of them. We didn’t have ideological debates, we didn’t shout each other down over parties and policies, and, on this subject at least, we agreed, tacitly, to disagree.

This was a harmonious anomaly that ill prepared me for other people’s approaches to political discourse. When boyfriends’ families asked me for my opinion, I took refuge in repeating what my dad had once said to me, that the ballet box was private and a person’s vote was no business of anyone else’s. When confronted with vocal folk whose views were the opposite of mine, I always wondered what the point was in taking them on when I would never change their minds, nor them mine.

I am – perhaps because we never picked over John Major or carved up Tony Blair over our dinner, or perhaps because we disagreed so violently about other things – very averse to arguments of any kind. This doesn’t mean that I don’t, on occasion, ooze disapproval about others’ beliefs, which must be very annoying, but I am pathologically emollient. I remember once reading a short story in which the heroine, a diplomat, revealed that her go-to line when dealing with tricky customers was to say “you could be right” whenever they came out with some mad opinion. I took the phrase to my heart. It doesn’t always work, mind, not least because some people love a row.

Nick and I have, over the years, argued gently about politics, except when drink has been taken and frankly, alcohol can turn any discussion into a war. But considering that we have almost always voted differently, and that his family love a good political barney, we’ve done pretty well to accommodate each other’s views, even if he used to call me Arthur, and I used to call him Maggie.

Thanks to spending hours in front of the TV in his room, reading i every day and because of his rapidly improving cognition, Nick has been following the pre-election campaigning with interest. A few weeks ago, he asked me if he could vote. I poked around online, found a form for people with disabilities who need someone to be their proxy and took it to one of his doctors to fill in. “I’ll do it as long as Nick doesn’t vote Ukip!” he said, jovially. He’d better not, I replied.

I sent off the form and I’m still waiting to see if I can vote on his behalf. If I can, it will be bittersweet. I hope so much that my healing husband can take part in the democratic process, and that I can help him do so. On the other hand, I’ll be going against every fibre in my body by putting an X in the box that he wants (don’t worry, it’s not Ukip. Now that would be grounds for divorce). A couple of acquaintances suggested that I “lost” the form on the way to the post box, or told him that he’d been turned down. No way – I may not agree with who Nick wants to vote for, but I’ll defend to the death his right to do so.