The phrase “too little, too late” comes to mind: this weekend, the head of the prime minister’s policy board, George Freeman, admitted it had been “lethal” for the Tories to run a campaign that ignored the country’s growing disillusionment with government cuts. For all of us who have fought cut after cut, there have been few greater sights than Theresa May’s election failure becoming – as my colleague Larry Elliott put it – “the final nail in austerity’s coffin”. But what feels particularly powerful is that it appears that the sections of society who have been austerity’s chief targets were the ones who helped end it.
Detailed statistics on turnout won’t be available for a few days but it seems likely that the mass registration of young people – who are facing a future of housing benefit cuts, squeezed wages and culled education – was a key factor in the swing towards Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. And while it’s hard to determine the turnout of people with disabilities – for one, a voter would have to self-identify as disabled – we know that a staggering 89% of eligible disabled people said they intended to vote. Even before the result, this felt like the election in which power began to tilt towards formerly marginalised voices, with disability rights reports spreading quickly on social media (the week before polling, one Guardian film about disability cuts received 6m views on Facebook). While Labour’s manifesto offered an inspiring programme, campaigns such as Operation Black Vote , Crip the Vote and Bite the Ballot connected black, disabled and young people to the polls – all groups that for years have been taking the brunt of Tory cuts.
That this election was “life or death” was a common comment from the disabled people and carers I spoke to. This wasn’t hyperbole but a terrified response to what a strengthened Conservative party would mean for us – more cuts to social care, more damage to the NHS and more demonisation of those on benefits. When you rely on state support to eat, pay the bills and leave the house, austerity is not an abstract ideology but an assault on life as you know it. To mobilise and vote against this is to fight hunger, isolation and worsening mental health.
As the election is picked apart over the coming weeks, this reality can’t be pushed out of the picture. Listen to the language used by many politicians and parts of the media in recent days and already it’s as if the anti-cuts message from the electorate is an irrelevancy. Party political manoeuvres are the focus – May sacrificing her aides, for instance, or Boris Johnson potentially positioning himself for a leadership bid. When austerity is mentioned – as by Freeman – there’s no remorse for the damage Tory policies have caused or engagement with why large numbers turned out on Thursday to reject it. Instead, there’s simply a self-serving analysis of what this means for them. The disabled or young are not people who have been devastated by years of deliberate austerity policies but numbers on a spreadsheet to try to win back.
No wonder some politicians and parts of the media are struggling to understand why the public has turned against the cuts, or to grasp the magnitude of this. Austerity has never affected them. For a disabled person too ill to earn a wage, the bedroom tax means having to skip meals. For the wealthy elite, losing a tenner a week wouldn’t be noticed.
And that’s another reason why this election feels like a turning point for the many who have long been shut out or kicked about by politics. Not only did the result suggest a potential surge in the vote from marginalised groups, but MPs are now more representative of the electorate. Parliament is now the most diverse in its history, with 207 women, 51 from an ethnic minority, and four disabled MPs, including a former disability rights campaigner. This is the sort of progress needed to galvanise the support of marginalised voters engaged so passionately this election – for women, working-class, BAME and disabled people to know that politics is by, as well as for, them.
The fight is far from over. Labour is yet to gain power. Existing cuts continue. Others are still to hit. But the tide is turning. The Tories thought they were heading for a mandate to further strip schools, hospitals, council services and benefits – but the electorate rejected it. The country is now shaking off the myth that cuts have to be accepted. With the push of newly energised voters, a reinvigorated left can turn this into the fundamental change we need: a Labour government that can reverse years of calamitous cuts. Then, finally, the Tories’ austerity project will be finished once and for all.
