How do you answer terror? Vote Make democracy the winner

THERESA May emails: Dear Nigel, if we lose six seats Jeremy Corbyn will become PM.” Is that a prediction?

IMAGINE where we’d be if William the Conquerer had lost the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

He’d be known as William the Failure, and our language wouldn’t be littered with so much silly French.

No a la carte on restaurant menus – and no restaurants or menus, which are also French words.

We’d drink coffee in coffee shops not cafes, and no one could accuse me of writing in cliches.

It’s one of history’s “what ifs”. Like the theory in political circles that there’d be no general election if Labour MP Eric Joyce hadn’t got plastered in a Commons before butting the MP for Pudsey and punching a pair of Tory councillors plus a Labour whip.

Joyce was the butterfly flapping his wings in Westminster who caused a political tsunami from West Lothian to West Sussex.

An attempt to stitch up his vacated Falkirk seat led Ed Miliband to introduce £3 fees for Labour supporters, who then voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Corbyn’s unenthusiastic Remain campaign led to Brexit and David Cameron quitting and Theresa May becoming PM and a snap election because she thought Corbs would be a pushover.

Such speculation is all very well but then the unexpected happens, as it did last year with the murder of MP Jo Cox, and clever theories and carefully orchestrated campaigns went out the window while shock and sadness blew in.

Now i t’s the grotesque massacre in Manchester of children who cared more for a pop princess than politics which shocks and saddens beyond belief.

But overnight Theresa May went from weak and wobbly over botched social care plans to strong and stable again, as the national leader should when the nation is in trauma.

We stopped thinking about how to pay for our care in old age and thoughts turned to those who will now never grow old.

The election felt far away as the nation met the more urgent need to share Manchester’s agony. Yet there is no escaping the polls in 11 days.

To vote is to go about our daily lives as normal. To vote is to defy the jackboot worn by terrorism that seeks to crush us.