I was in town with a friend yesterday evening and we bought a Chinese takeaway and started walking back to my place. We passed New Labour’s constituency office and spotted our MP/candidate, Russell Brown, heading there from across the street.

As you can probably imagine, I was seething with anger just at the sight of him. I thought of what to say. What could I say that I didn’t say to him when we met in his office, when trying to get through to him was like attempting to explain particle physics to a Mongolian yak herdman’s grandmother?

I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass without saying something, so I started thinking along the lines of sarcasm, or maybe an all-out rant. There are more and more empty shops in town. There is a row right in the centre where three out of four are closed, plus many others. With this in mind, I thought of chastising him for the state of the town after five years with him as our MP. He was one of the many MPs who voted for Post Office closures all over the country. When branches were threatened in his own constituency, naturally, he mounted a ‘Save our Post Offices’ type campaign.

And failed.

In the end, I just felt such contempt for the man and his party that I couldn’t bring myself to utter a word to him. With hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t, because whatever I would have said in that moment of anger would probably have made him believe he was standing on the moral high ground.

What would you have done?