Where have all the political posters gone? Fear is the real reason voters won’t display them

I used to happily celebrate my support during a general election with a poster in my window. Not anymore. We need to get back to a place where we can publicly disagree without risk to our homes or bodies

It might just be me, but where have all the election posters gone?

Wheeling around my gaff, I haven’t spotted a single one with the exception of those Wes Streeting, the local Labour MP, has plastered all over his constituency office, which happens to be on my regular route.

For a brief moment I thought, ooh, there’s a flash of blue. Could one of the houses opposite have responded with a Tory poster? But no, the blue in question was much darker than their favoured shade, with the board belonging to an estate agent.

There is almost always at least one Tory and one Labour window on my street. But they’re not there this time and I haven’t seen many when venturing further afield either.

I know, I know. This is hardly scientific. There may be streets that have so many multicoloured placards put up by people wanting to show their support for their preferred candidate, and to urge the neighbours to join them, that they look like football terraces.

If so, they seem a lot harder to find than they used to be. And that’s a pity.

An election should be something to celebrate. Democracy is precious and fragile. It’s a game millions of people around the world would like to play but aren’t allowed to.

Just ask the people who’ve been taking to the streets in Hong Kong how much it matters. Or those the TV cameras pick up queueing for hours on end to put an X in the box in places where they’ve been allowed to vote for the first time after years of being crushed under the hobnailed boots of thuggish leaders.

It could be the lack of any obvious display represents the fact that the choices we are being offered are rather hard to celebrate. Do you really want to broadcast your support for an ass from your window?

Another reason might be that the parties those asses represent find spinning lies on social media to be a far more profitable means of campaigning than handing out posters.

The Tories have indulged in some particularly egregious acts of cynicism. They were called out by Twitter for rebranding their feed as “factcheckuk” during Boris Johnson’s debate with Jeremy Corbyn. More recently, the BBC has demanded they take down Facebook ads that blatantly distort the reporting of the broadcaster’s correspondents to make it look as if they were criticising Brexit delays.

Publicly calling attention to yourself as a supporter of a party that plays those sort of games? I can see why people might be reluctant. But there might be more sinister reasons for people’s reluctance to get involved.

MPs from all sides have had the windows of their offices smashed in and obscene graffiti daubed all over them. People might have good reason not to put up posters if that’s what they risk.

I was minded to display one of Wes’s posters last time around. It’s not because I’m a diehard Labour supporter. I’m a floating voter, having cast ballots for all parties of a progressive bent at some point.

It’s because I think he’s a good constituency MP and a rare voice of reason in a parliament that sometimes feels as if it has abandoned all pretence of having any. I wanted to see him re-elected and I had no problem in registering my support for him.

My wife, however, vetoed the idea even though she likes him too. This time around there was no debate. I’d moved into her corner. Why take the risk?

This is a regrettable consequence of the division that has been sown in this country over the past few years, sometimes with malice aforethought.

Johnson is arguably its chief architect, although I’m not going to pretend he and the Tories are alone in playing that game.

While I’ve written many a polemic in my time, and will continue to do so, we do need to get back to a place where we can disagree without putting our property at risk of damage, or worse, our bodies. Too many people have been assaulted simply for expressing a view. Too many MPs have panic buttons installed at their homes.

Are we as far from those places where giving voice to an opinion will get you thrown in jail as we like to imagine? I’m not sure that we are. Not anymore.

I want to see the posters back. It would be a healthy development. We need to get back to a place where people feel comfortable with displaying them if they want to.

It’s something the more thoughtful MPs from all sides might like to ponder when the new parliament sits because I fear we are in a very dangerous place.