It was all looking so rosy. Five years of austerity had turned the public against the Tories and David Cameron, who'd never seemed too popular in the first place and mostly got elected on the strength of not being Gordon Brown.
What's more, the Lib-Dems were going to be rightfully wiped out across the UK. I was one of the poor, misguided sods who voted for them last time, looking for a feasible left-wing alternative after painfully observing that whilst Gordon Brown had spent decades wanting to be Prime Minister, he had apparently not bothered to think of what he'd actually be doing once he got there. His entire tenure was reminiscent of a frantic and socially inept headless chicken, lurching from one disaster to the next. So, I (and indeed many others) voted for the Lib-Dems, who promptly walked into Conservative central office and gave up all their support (and MP votes) for the political equivalent of 50p and a half pack of Jaffa cakes. Nick Clegg might have enjoyed playing king maker for a few weeks, but he paid for it with interest in this election.
Yes, Labour were going to be decimated in Scotland by the SNP in Scotland, but they were both left-leaning parties and their policies overlapped. They would inevitably form a coalition after the election, along with Plaid Cymru, Greens and maybe even whatever was left of the Lib Dems- if they were desperate enough to keep Nick as Deputy PM. All the polls seemed to point to a Labour-Conservative draw, with a leftist coalition ultimately prevailing.
Then the election itself actually happened.
Yes, the Lib-Dems were routed. Yes, the SNP swept Scotland. But the Labour support failed to materialise; indeed, the Conservatives swept into power with an outright majority. The incumbency effect appears to have been particularly strong; nobody particularly wanted to admit they'd be voting for the Tories, but once in the privacy of an election booth they decided to stick with what they knew.
I can't begin to say just how gutting that is. In five years, the Tories have smashed the education system, slashed benefits for the disabled and generally unfortunate, and basically cut as much money from the NHS and other public services as they can without people rioting in the streets. I no longer live in the UK, but honestly I'm a little worried for my friends and family back home. I've got grandmothers who are eligible for Winter Fuel Allowance, old friends with kids who are going to be entering school soon, and family members employed by the NHS.
I joked the other day that now the Conservatives had won, I'd wouldn't be living in the country for another five years. That's probably not the case, but I'm certainly not planning an extended stay; I haven't exactly got the highest of hopes for the future. Now the Tories have a majority, they'll doubtlessly continue their austerity policy with renewed zeal. Not to mention, there's now an EU referendum coming up. If the Conservatives could win a majority in this parliament then I'm more than certain that the Daily Mail et. al. would swing us out of the European Union and get rid of those pesky supermarket banana regulations (not true, but hey) and those pesky human rights courts to boot.
If I seem like I'm taking it personally- well, I guess I kind of am. I'm soon to marry someone from outside the EU, and if my country's lurch to the right says anything, it's that immigrants aren't really welcome. For what it's worth, I railed against UKIP prior to the election. Though they didn't win many seats and Farage was forced to step down as leader, they nevertheless polled an alarmingly high number of votes, and a Tory government must be eager to hoover those up by chiming in with an anti-immigration message. I'm sure I'll go into this further at a later stage, but it absolutely sickens me with the amount of discrimination that's levelled at people in Britain who were born overseas. The way overseas nationals are portrayed in the press, you'd think every single person born east of Dover was a HIV riddled war criminal, desperate to milk out benefits system to live in a mansion with their 20+ children. It's xenophobia, plain and simple, but the Great British public laps it up. UKIP got millions of votes, and the Tories will be chasing each and every one of them.
Outside of my own personal self interest though, it seems as if we're reaching an end road as a nation. Look at a map of the results, and it's pretty clear where the future lies: Scotland will break for full independence at the earliest possible opportunity (with Wales sure to follow), Labour bossing the north and chunks of the major cities, and the Tories locking out the South. Indeed, the Conservatives won every single seat in my home county of Northamptonshire. As it stands, we're a divided nation. Whilst I want to remain optimistic, there seems little prospect of reconciliation for us; many of us want one thing, and many others want the exact opposite. It's a sad state of affairs, and there's at least five more years of it.
To quote John Oliver, "whoop defucking whoop".
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