I was a “conscientious abstainer” for the Brexit referendum in 2016; and if conversations with friends are anything to judge by, many Catholics in this coming election will be writing “none of the above” on the ballot paper in next week’s general election. “It’s really a situation of despair,” one old friend lamented to me. “There is no party I can in all conscience vote for.” She – like many British Catholics – is a Remainer. But the mainstream Remain parties have, in her view, so completely trampled on her values that she cannot bring herself to put an “X” against any of their brands. As a Remainer, she also can’t vote Tory, which now stands fully for an EU exit. As a Catholic, she can’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn, who has pledged to decriminalise abortion – potentially stripping the unborn of any legal status whatsoever, at any stage of pregnancy. (He has also promised to bring in legislation to protect lobsters from being cooked while alive: a crustacean will have more rights than the human foetus.) She can’t vote for the Liberal Democrats either, although she would be supportive of their EU views. Not only did they kick out Rob Flello as a candidate – as he wrote recently in this magazine – but they are now rejecting other would-be candidates just for being Catholic. In a letter to the Tablet, Michael D Phelan said that some years ago he applied to be a general election candidate for the Libs Dems. He was asked at a selection committee if he was a Catholic – since he had an Irish name – and was then told he would “not be considered as a suitable candidate”. As for the Greens, their policies include drastic population reduction and encouragement of one-child – or no-child – families. The English and Welsh bishops have said that Catholics can’t “just watch from the balcony” in the election: they need to vote. But for a considerable slice of the Catholic population of this country, who, exactly, can they vote for? The Chief Rabbi showed courage in denouncing Labour’s anti-Semitism. Perhaps a Catholic churchman might show equal courage in calling out the contempt for questions of conscience among the leading political parties.