A little under five years ago, in December 2019, I wrote a column – among my first for this magazine – reflecting on the result of that month’s election, in which Boris Johnson’s Tories won a historic majority. In the early hours of the morning, dejected after a burst-balloon of a New Statesman election party, I wrote of my growing sense of futility and despair. I had, at that time, voted in four general elections, and each had been won by the party I vehemently opposed. My vote, which I had been raised to believe mattered, didn’t seem to matter much at all.
Fourteen years of Tory rule mapped exactly on to the 14 years I have been eligible to vote. In 2010, my first election, aged 18, I voted Lib Dem, only for Nick Clegg to sell out my cohort of soon-to-be university students. Then in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019, I lost again and again. Each time I hoped a little less, invested a little less, grieved a little less. If there was a political home for those like me, who wanted desperately to believe that there was such a thing as society, but did not believe David Cameron when he said “we’re all in this together”, I could not find it. I had never known electoral victory. Until last night.
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