As we come up to the night before Election Day, I’m consumed by a sense of déjà vu. Not though for any other political process- this 2017 General Election is like no other - but to memories of the night before my final university exams. Even though I’ve known about this test for months, I still feel caught off guard. There is so much to cram, so much to go over and just not enough time. Tomorrow will not just shape all of our lives, one way or another, for the next five years, but will reset this country’s political landscape for the next 25 years. And we have one last evening to correct our course.

On 18 April, the picture of this election was remarkably simple. This was fundamentally a single-issue election on Brexit. The main task of the next government is Brexit, and for those of us who still remain pro-EU, we believe in conducting Brexit negotiations in a manner that will protect our membership of the single market and free movement and, further, to hold a second referendum on any final deal.

This article though is not about Brexit. As an active Liberal Democrat member and canvasser in Bermondsey & Old Southwark, we have campaigned hard over the last two months on our USP that we are the only real opposition to either an inward-looking Conservative - or backward-looking Labour - government who remain staunchly committed to conducting Brexit negotiations that threaten our mid and long-term future. But political campaigns do not exist in a vacuum. As much as we would have wanted the last two months to be a nationwide reflection on our relationship with the EU, three terrorist attacks in four months have widened the scope of the national conversation. And we, as a country and electorate, must face those challenges head on.

When Theresa May became the Conservative Party leader on 11 July (and subsequently the Prime Minister two days later), she did so pretty much by default. Although long forgotten now, the Conservative leadership election that put her in place was a car crash of calamities. That the final round consisted of her and Andrea Leadsom (remember her?) illustrated the paucity of viable candidates for the Tory leadership. And, in the midst of the political chaos, Mrs May emerged as the sensible, steady hand on the tiller.

For liberals though, Theresa May has long featured high up on the list of most dangerous people to lead a government. That might sound like political hyperbole, or progressive hysteria, but let’s look at her track record. Her reputation for “strong and stable” leadership belies a long-term opposition to the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), which gives effect to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and which frustrated May for seven long years as Home Secretary. Most famously, her experience with Abu Qatada’s 2013 deportation shaped her views on the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights. Back then, she insisted that we should consider withdrawal from the ECHR (which is separate to our membership of the EU) to prevent any repeat of the Abu Qatada affair.

But her opposition to the HRA stretches before 2013. In 2011, she argued at the Conservative Party Conference that the HRA needed to be amended because the Courts had ruled that a Bolivian national was allowed to remain in the UK "because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat". In fact, she was making it up. The Home Office actually had failed to apply its own rules for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK, and our judicial system had merely just pointed that out. Back then, Amnesty International said that May’s comments only fuelled “myths and misconceptions” about the HRA and even Ken Clarke, her Cabinet colleague at the time, called her comments “laughable and childlike”.

Except there is very little to find funny when that same person wants to return to 10 Downing Street for a period of 5 years, with a mandate to pursue a regressive agenda that undoes all the progress that we have made in the post-1945 era. As Prime Minister, there is nothing to suggest that May has changed her tune in respecting the UK’s constitutional framework. Indeed, her attempt to invoke Article 50 without consulting Parliament suggested that, for her, Brexit is not about taking power from Brussels to Westminster but rather from Brussels to Whitehall. May sees our legal system, as currently conceived, as an inconvenient obstacle in the 'real' job of running government.

And when you give Mrs May too much power, that apparently steady hand becomes an iron fist, devoid of any compassion. Only two weeks ago, the Court of Appeal found that May as Home Secretary acted unlawfully in 2014 by refusing to even consider allowing entry to the UK a group of refugee families stranded on the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus (a case that got almost no traction in the mainstream media). Make no mistake, this is a lady who, when faced with a group of 75 individuals washed ashore on Cyprus in October 1998, does not even look at their case.

In the midst of Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge, compassion can be in short supply. In the face of attacks on our national security, May’s calls to impose further curfews; restrictions on association with other known extremists; controls on where they can travel; and limits on access to communication devices, as well as to increase the period for which terror suspects can be held without trial, plays well politically. And her promise that “if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it” is meant to assuage a jittery electorate that she is no softie when it comes to domestic security.

The sad truth is that, should Mrs May return to Downing Street, should she pursue her agenda of curbing our freedoms: venomous terrorism will have accomplished a de facto victory. Hugh Muir was right when he argued that, for preachers of hate, these acts of terrorism are a war on joy. We have created a political framework which allows us to go wherever, wear whatever, love whomever, and be whoever we want to be. That political framework, which has taken centuries to build, is under threat by a disgusting perversion of faith. And it is at this point, more than ever, where we must protect with radical furore the principles and values we hold dear.

I know from talking to people in my local constituency - which surrounds the London Bridge area - in the wake of the attacks, that people are frightened. There is another debate to be had on how we deal with this crisis in national security. Although that topic deserves its own space and time, to my mind, more community police officers, better integration of minority communities and a foreign policy that finally sheds links its dangerous links with Saudi Arabia would make a lot more headway than taking aim at the Human Rights Act. But what I have also been struck by is local people’s togetherness. We keep calm, and we carry on. That’s what we do. And, to a man, woman and child: no-one has uttered the words of repealing our civil liberties. As an electorate, we are much stronger, more brave and more together than Mrs May's knee-jerk reactions give us credit.

And that is because these terrorists do not get to win. They do not crush our spirit, nor will they make us abrogate our principles. They do not stop us. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We have fought too hard, progressed too far to turn back now. On 8 June, do not vote in fear. Vote for unity. Vote for hope. #VoteProgressive