Take my wife: Corbyn and Farron vote alone

But little about this campaign has conformed to convention.

Nick Clegg’s wife, the lawyer and “food blogger” Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, had kept a low profile during the campaign of two years ago but had been at his side for the ceremonial ballot casting at Sheffield’s Hall Park Centre, her bright yellow blouse colour-matching his tie.

His successor arrived today with nothing on his arm but an umbrella.

Tim Farron had walked to the polling station at Kendal’s Stonecross Manor Hotel with Sylvia Emmott, a local councillor. His wife, Rosemary, was nowhere to be seen.

Some 250 miles south, Jeremy Corbyn also cut a solitary figure. Laura Álvarez, his third wife and, at 48, 20 years his junior, has been off the media radar for the entire campaign and clearly saw polling day as no reason to appear.

Mr Corbyn emerged from Pakeman Primary School in Holloway, and stated the obvious.

“I’ve just voted,” he announced. “It’s a day of our democracy.”

There may have been a note of relief that he had not been left entirely to his own devices, as he added, to a phalanx of photographers and a few voters: “Thank you very much, all of you, for coming here today.”

It had been a very different picture at Doncaster two years ago, when his predecessor, Ed Miliband, arrived with his wife, the barrister Justine Thornton - she in a pale blue top and casual cropped trousers, he in regulation dark suit and red tie.

The practice of parading party leaders’ wives as fashion accessories on polling day had, until today, shown no sign of abating, and under the scrutiny of fashionistas from the glossy mags, enormous attention had been paid to the smallest of details. Partners were expected to position their style swingometers somewhere around “chic” - not upstaging but not dowdy, either.

However, Theresa May’s photo shoot for the front page of American Vogue earlier this year - coupled with the ridicule it attracted from some quarters and the unlikelihood of any of her rivals being asked to follow suit - may have changed the background music.

Today, Mrs May sported one of her trademark blazers and a pair of casual, leopard print shoes she and her husband, Philip, cast their votes in the unfashionable setting of a scout hut on the outskirts of Maiden­head. He was more casual still, also in a blazer, and with a checked shirt and light brown Hush Puppies.

They were somewhat upstaged by another candidate, the fathers’ rights protester, Bobby Smith, who came dressed as Elmo from the children’s TV series, Sesame Street.

He had polled a total of 37 votes when he stood against David Cameron in 2015, and was not on the pictures when the then-prime minister arrived with wife Samantha, a fashion icon of her time, in co-ordinating shades of blue.

North of the border, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon adhered to convention, arriving at Broomhouse Community Hall in Glasgow with her husband, Peter Murrell. The Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, brought her partner, Jen Wilson, and her dog, to vote at an Edinburgh cafe.

But if it was romance you were after, West Belfast was where you wanted to be. The Alliance candidate, Sorcha Eastwood, arrived fresh from her marriage to Dale Shirlow earlier in the day, still wearing her bridal gown.