In the weeks since the election, apart from getting something like a normal life back, I have been doing some reflecting on what comes next for me in politics.

I joined the Pirate Party on the back of a specific issue- the Digital Economy Act, and more generally to kick against the system. Which is fine for an activist. However, the experience of standing for election has changed me and my point of view. What the wider world has seen the least is the amount of time I've spent pounding the streets in Manchester in 6 elections in just 3 years.

I see daily child poverty, poor health outcomes, environmental damage, intolerable inequality in the city where I live. It's gutting to visit the same streets months and years later and still see the same houses boarded up, the same problems weighing people down.

This is why I championed a broadening of the manifesto. It was not just so we “looked sensible”. It's because I passionately believe in action on the issues I have seen around me.

In the run up to the election the calls for tactical voting are increasing. Newspapers are telling you how to vote. Celebrities are being wheeled out to tell you how to vote. There are ever louder cries for people to abandon their principles and gamble on a particular outcome. Even though the outcome of this election is the most uncertain in recent history.

Every attempt is being made to squeeze every small party vote by appealing to the fears of either Miliband or Cameron as Prime Minister. When frankly quite a lot of us don't rate either.

So why vote Pirate then, when so much is at stake this time?

The simple answer is that every vote for us is a vote for a different agenda. That politics' priorities should be set by all the people, not  just by Westminster insiders, a Murdoch press and celebrity bigmouths.