The News & Star is a fervent advocate of democracy.

We believe it is important that you exercise your right to vote in Thursday’s General Election.

Unlike much of the national press we won’t be telling you who to vote for.

We think you are able to make up your own mind.

That’s because we are not politically biased like much of the national press.

We believe in giving you the facts, analysis, and all sides of the arguments with balanced, fair, accurate, local, award-winning journalism.

We have sought to do that across all our websites and print titles ever since the election was called.

So why earlier this week would we take a political advertisement on the front and back of some our newspapers, some people would ask?

First and foremost it is because it is exactly that, a paid-for advert, in this case for the Conservative Party.

We have carried political adverts in the exact same position for other parties in the past including for the Labour Party during the recent Copeland by-election and Cumbria County Council elections.

On all occasions the paid-for advert was clearly labelled as an ‘advertisement’.

This does not influence our independent journalism or editorial content. Nor will it in the future.

The reality is democratic pillars of local press like the News & Star only survive on the support of advertisers.

Without advertising support, there would be no local press and our democracy would be poorer for it.

Political parties are spending money on a range of advertising during this campaign and like all media outlets as long as the advertisements do not break the law there is no legitimate reason for us to refuse to carry their message.

We are indeed proud that political parties of different viewpoints see, and value, the power of local press in their messaging and want to reach out to our audiences.

Across the community we should celebrate that the local press has this value among advertisers as it helps sustain the future viability of our titles and the democratic role they perform.

We will continue to celebrate the political independence of our editorial.

So, whatever your political persuasion, whichever of the political parties, party leaders, or constituency candidates has won the argument for you over the last few weeks, we would encourage you to go out and cast your vote on Thursday. Democracy is dependent on it.