There is everything to play for in this election

Just 5,951 people in 8 constituencies could have changed the outcome of the 2017 election...

The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, narrowly won her seat in Hastings South, after a re-count, with a majority of only 346 votes. Some 412 votes in that same constituency went to an independent candidate and another 1,885 went to the LibDems. If a fraction of those votes had gone to Labour, Amber Rudd would have been out.

In Calder Valley, the Conservatives held on with a majority of 609 while 631 people voted Green and another 1,034 voted for an independent.

The Conservative majority in Mansfield was 1,057 and 1,079 people voted for an independent candidate there.

The Conservatives took Stoke-on-Trent South from the Labour Party with a majority of 663, while 643 people voted Green in that constituency and 808 voted LibDem.

In Aberconwy, the Conservatives held onto the seat with a majority of just 635, while Plaid Cymru received 3,170 votes.

In Preseli Pembrokeshire, the Conservative majority was 314 and the Plaid Cymru vote was 2,711. An independent candidate there also got 1,209 votes.

In Pudsey, the Conservative majority was 331 while 1,138 people voted there for the 'Yorkshire Party'.

And in Belfast South, the DUP (which went on to prop up the minority Conservative government) took the seat from SDLP (a Labour-leaning party) with a majority of 1,996 while 2,241 people voted Green in that constituency.

And what if Labour (or their partners), rather than the Conservatives (and their partners), had won those additional 8 seats?

Instead of Conservatives plus DUP on 328 and Labour plus 'progressive alliance' on 314 seats, it would instead have stood at Conservatives + DUP on 320, Labour + 'PA' on 322. In other words, Jeremy Corbyn, rather than Theresa May, would in all likelihood have become Prime Minister in 2017. That is what a few thousand votes going to smaller parties in just 8 constituencies meant in that election. That has been the case in election after election, not only here but also in the United States - where voters in just 4 states handed the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016.

With the extra votes of less than 6,000 people in just 8 constituencies, we could have elected a Labour government in 2017. That's how close we came, out of more than 30 million votes cast in 650 constituencies across the UK.

To put this into perspective, approximately 1.3 million young people have turned 18 since 2017. And more than 14 million people did not vote at all in 2017. Despite all the uncertainties created by the politics of Brexit, there is everything to play for in this election. It can easily be won by those who choose to vote on behalf of future generations and the planet - those who choose to vote to survive!