I am already sick of the general election campaign and there’s still five weeks to go - Bill Carmichael

I bunked off school to join his campaign, spending weeks delivering leaflets, knocking on doors, introducing the candidate, and having sometimes heated conversations on the doorsteps. It was an invaluable political education, and I learned more about what makes people tick than I could ever have done in a formal classroom.

The result of that February election was a hung parliament and a minority Labour administration, and there followed months of drama, with votes won by a whisker, and MPs roused from their sick beds to troop through the lobbies, which only ended in October when Labour won an outright majority.

Five years later I was in a large crowd outside the Guildhall in Cambridge, where I was then studying for my finals, when it became clear that Margaret Thatcher was leading the Conservatives to a famous general election victory.

She would go on to dominate British politics for the next decade, a turbulent period that included the miners strike, the poll tax riots and an IRA assassination attempt in Brighton. Now working as a journalist, I covered her election wins in 1983 and 1987, and her eventual defenestration by the Conservatives in 1990.

The 1992 general election was notable because the Labour Party, now led by Neil Kinnock, were ahead in the polls and clearly thought the result was in the bag. Their hubris was exemplified by a big rally at the Sheffield Arena when Kinnock screamed “We’re all right!” three times at the crowd like some superannuated rock star.

A week later the Conservatives, led by John Major, registered their fourth general election victory on the run.

Labour had to wait another five years before they were returned to power in what I like to call the ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ election because of the optimism surrounding their telegenic leader, Tony Blair. Blair went on to win three general elections on the trot until his party, just like the Conservatives with Margaret Thatcher, decided to drop their most successful leader in modern times.

Blair’s time in office was defined by the UK’s participation in the Iraq war in 2003 - a move which earned him the undying enmity of the party’s left wing.

The year 2010 saw the UK’s first coalition government for 65 years come to power with a Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration led by Tory leader David Cameron, and his deputy, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

The decision to get into bed with the Tories proved disastrous for the Lib Dems who were hammered in the 2015 general election, when the Conservatives won an unexpected outright majority, only for Cameron to quit the following year after losing the Brexit referendum against all the odds.

In 2017 we saw the remarkable Jeremy Corbyn surge which almost, but not quite, upended Cameron’s successor as Conservative leader, Theresa May. And two years later we saw the even bigger Boris Bounce as the Conservatives demolished Labour’s red wall in the north and midlands with the promise of ‘Get Brexit Done’, handing Labour their worst election defeat since 1935.

So, for more than half a century I have followed all of this avidly, and reported on a lot of it too. So you might think I’d be keen about the current campaign, but you would be wrong. I’ve never been less enthusiastic and uninspired by politics in my life. I am sick of it already and there’s five weeks still to go. I can’t wait for it to be over.

Why? Partly because the current crop of politicians are so drab and bland, but mainly because I am fed up with them being dishonest with us. Given the state of the economy the next government, whoever wins, will impose tax rises or cuts to services, or most likely both.

There will be no magic cure for the failing NHS, mass illegal immigration will continue, the benefits bill will rocket, housing won’t be any cheaper and our roads will still be full of potholes.

That’s the reality, and all the promises in the world will make no difference.