When they go to the polls on Thursday in Kent or in Caithness or in Monmouth, they will vote on issues which are broadly typical of a developed and stable democracy. Preferences will be cast for Tory, Labour or Liberal Democrat on the economy, on health, on Europe, on standards in office, on leadership. In Northern Ireland it will be different. In Belfast and in Craigavon and in Derry and everywhere else, they will vote mostly along ethnic or tribal lines and then, within those boundaries, for candidates representing a spectrum of attitudes and stances. Votes will be cast for men who are known to have blood on their hands. Votes will be cast for some who are ambivalent. Hopefully, an increased number of votes will be cast for those who seek to define the middle ground and to build a solution upon it.
For both communities this is a critical election. It is now all but certain that by the weekend Mr Tony Blair will be installed as prime minister with a majority of anything from 50 to 100 seats in the House of Commons and that Dr Mo Mowlam will sit in Sir Patrick Mayhew's office at Stormont Castle. On June 3rd the adjourned talks will resume at the Northern Ireland Forum while the Republic's election will probably take place late in May or early in June.
The people who live in Northern Ireland face a choice which is much more elemental than their fellow citizens of the UK in deciding between Tony Blair and John Major. They have to choose in both communities between candidates who stand for moderation and compromise and those who urge the bleak security of the extremes. For unionism it is a choice between those who have the confidence to move to a new order (the News Letter of Belfast yesterday described it as "unionism sure of its own destiny") and those who cling to the old watchwords of no surrender and not an inch. For nationalists it is a choice between those who believe in peaceful methods alone and those who believe that politics and violence can be alternated as tactics demand.
The future of Northern Ireland and the well being of these islands as a whole - can turn on the choices which are made on Thursday. A strong vote for the moderate unionism of the UUP may give Mr David Trimble the necessary boost in confidence to engage with resolution in the resumed talks process. Conversely, any drift to the obscurantism of the DUP or the narrow ground of the UK Unionists could weaken him. For the nationalist voter the choice is stark. A vote for Sinn Fein is an endorsement of the bombers, the snipers and the assassins. It is an affirmation to the men who shot RUC Reservist Alice Collins in Derry earlier this month that they may carry on, shoot away, without fear that their political counterparts in Sinn Fein will be disadvantaged. A high vote for Sinn Fein will simply confirm the wisdom of the Provisionals strategy that they can have it both ways.
Sinn Fein candidates have been peddling the extraordinary logic that a strong electoral showing, not withstanding the campaign of violence, will hasten the ending of that violence. What is this but an attempt to reverse the only sequence which is acceptable where a democracy is endeavouring to make room at the table for people who have hitherto refused to accept the rules? It is saying, "vote us into power first and then we will persuade the men of violence to give up".
In his article written for The Irish Times today, Mr Major rightly points to the bright future that exists for Northern Ireland with growing prosperity and inward investment. But whether or not one accepts his claim that this could be put at risk in a Labour government, there will be common consent to his warning that it is threatened first and foremost by terrorist violence. Any vote which goes to those on the extremes weighs against a future of prosperity and peace.