Last night, the exit polls revealed that under Boris Johnson's leadership, the Conservative party was on the way to their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher was in power. That was confirmed this morning when, with 44% of the vote share, the Conservative party won 364 seats in a sweeping victory.
The victory itself was not a surprise, really it was the scale of seats they gained that was shocking. The circumstances around which this election was called were less than favourable. We had a newly-appointed Prime Minster whose reputation preceded him, both at home and internationally. Once the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson became the household name associated with chaos and controversy in everything from his personal life to questionable hair, an unwavering ambition to be prime minister and a history of racist language. For many people reading this, voting for Boris Johnson was never an option, from "picanninies with watermelon smiles", "tank top wearing bum boys" and the comparison of Muslim women wearing burkas to letterboxes, it seemed obvious that the concerns or even respect for communities of colour just didn't exist.
After ten years of Conservative leadership under which austerity ravaged the lives of regular, working-class people, a hostile environment policy saw British citizens of the Windrush generation deported, face severe health issues and even die, with no resolution till today, voting Tory just wasn't conceivable. Reports of NHS nurses using food banks shocked and moved us. The NHS is a service that we not only built, but stepped in to carry for decades. Our parents raised us working for the NHS, it's why some of us are here, and at one point in time we've all made use of it, so we feel an emotional connection to it and the decay of it is something that has been difficult to witness. Discussion of privatising it justly scares people who heavily depend on it to stay alive.