Johann Hari

Less than a week to go, and the nation is greeting a great moment of democratic destiny - its chance to go to the European and local polls on 10 June - with a monumental, almighty shrug of the shoulders. Are we discussing Europe, immigration, or - a mad idea! - the country we just invaded (or the one we invaded before that)? No; election coverage has been dominated by Robert Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you know our politics is in the gutter when all we do is look at faded stars.

A few days ago I was speaking to a smart single mum on a long train journey. She could deliver an eloquent five-minute lecture on how the Working Families' Tax Credit had changed her life. She marched against the war a year ago. She believed the minimum wage should be increased. She had views and lots of them; she was not apathetic. But when I asked her who she was planning to vote for in the Euro-elections, she said, "Nobody. They're all the same." Really? From the BNP to the Respect coalition?

At this election, British voters have more real choice than at any other time. Euro-elections are determined by proportional representation, so the smaller parties aren't merely protest votes any more. You can vote Green or UKIP and expect your vote to actually translate into an elected representative. British people are stuck at most elections with - effectively - a choice between two parties, or at most three. This time, you're browsing through a packed political supermarket, with a flavour for every conceivable taste. Don't tell me your vote doesn't count - and don't lazily declare they are all corrupt without evidence. So what are your options? I talked last week about the options on the right: the creepy paranoia of UKIP, the racism of the BNP, and the Tory Party of Michael Howard and Oliver "Let's cut public spending by £135bn" Letwin. The choices on the left are more tantalising: Labour, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and the Respect coalition.

I still think there's a good case for voting Labour. (Yes, I know that according to the opinion polls it's only me and the Blair family who hold this mad view, and even Cherie's probably wavering these days.) Thanks to Labour policies, we now have the lowest unemployment for 30 years. Long-term youth unemployment is now, incredibly, lower than 5,000 people.

Tory cynics jeer that this is due to the strength of the global economy - but how come no other country locked into the same global trends has pulled it off? No, it's due to a strong global economy and Labour policies.

Special credit goes to the New Deal and, especially, the Working Families' Tax Credit, which tops up the wages of people at the bottom of the economic pile. This makes it pay for them to come off benefits and into work. I should know - half my family is on it. The Tories are pledged to abolish the New Deal and slash the WFTC to ribbons.

But I understand why many people will find it impossible to cast a vote for Labour this time. Many people object to the increasingly authoritarian simple-mindedness of David Blunkett and, of course, the Iraq war.

In addition, the stakes seem low: it's not as if Michael Howard will end up in Downing Street if you vote to kick Blair this time. So perhaps the obvious first stop for those who are disgusted by the war is the Respect coalition, which has evolved out of the Stop the War organising body.

I supported the war, so it's no surprise that I'm not voting for Respect. But I am sure most opponents of the war - who sincerely opposed Saddam Hussein's tyranny - will not vote Respect once they know who is involved.

The main planks of the movement are the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). The SWP is a totalitarian organisation. They called for Saddam to win the 1990-91 Gulf War, and their model society is Lenin's Soviet Union.

The MAB is an Islamic fundamentalist off-shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which has blatantly misogynist and homophobic strands. A typical Respect candidate is Yvonne Ridley, a former journalist, who describes the young fundamentalists who went to fight in defence of the burqa-enforcing Taliban as "heroic" and "principled". A vote for Respect is a vote for totalitarians in an unconvincing left-wing costume.

So if you want to choose an anti-war party but can't stomach supporters of Lenin, Saddam and the Taliban, where can you go?

The Liberal Democrats took a clear anti-war line - and they have some brave policies for the local elections. They have breached the ultimate post-poll tax political taboo and advocated reform of Britain's grotesquely regressive system of local taxation.

The party wants to scrap council tax and replace it with a progressive system of local income tax.

It's easy: under their scheme, the amount you pay in tax to your council would be calculated according to your income, just as with income tax. The absurd situation where I pay the same council tax as the deprived families round the corner crammed five-into-a-flat would end.

This is a smart local policy for local elections - and it might just have an impact. The Labour Government is reviewing local taxation; a strong Lib Dem vote next week will give them the moral authority to lobby hard for their policy to be adopted nationally.

If only they had a heavyweight leader like Menzies Campbell to communicate these policies, the danger of the Lib Dems being overtaken by UKIP might be staved off.

The other anti-war option is the Green Party. They already have two British MEPs, Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert, with a reputation for hard work in the European Parliament. A Green vote is an opportunity to say that, whatever petty obsessions dominate the day-to-day political agenda, at least some people remember that our planet is slowly, lethally warming.

Some of their policies are a bit eccentric - for example, they seem to be marketing themselves as more Eurosceptic than UKIP, a strange stance for a progressive party.

But when it comes to demanding a swift transition away from burning poisonous fossil fuels, the Greens are the only party who do not have an eccentric position.

So remind me again why "they're all the same". Remind me again why you won't bother to vote.

This weekend will be dominated by the anniversary of D-Day. Murdoch-empire xenophobes will imply that the best way we can honour the generation who saved the world from fascism 60 years ago is to kick against the European Union.

Vote for Eurosceptic parties, they will wail, or boycott the European elections altogether.

In fact, what better tribute to those who died fighting Nazism than for all Europe, united, free and at peace, to vote on the same day? And what greater insult than to dismiss the democracy they died to defend and extend as boring and empty?