Why this lifelong Republican has to vote for Biden

For as long as I was old enough to think about politics, I have been a Republican. When my dad told me, aged six, that Bill Clinton had beaten Bob Dole, I’m told I cried. I don’t remember this, but do have vivid memories of running around St Andrews in my first year at university in a handmade McCain-Palin T-shirt with ‘NO-bama’ sketched in sharpie on the back. I graduated into an internship on Mitt Romney’s campaign and when I moved to London I became a spokesman for Republicans Overseas. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the first time I voted Democrat would be to put Barack Obama’s vice president in the Oval Office. Yet I’m voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

I know their economic policies will make America poorer, especially as the economy tries to recover from Covid-19: the tax rises and the huge increase in spending (the kind that Senator Biden used to be wary of).