We have endured years of a disastrous coalition government in this country, whose policies varied between incompetence, such as the continued insistence that austerity works despite all evidence to the contrary, and outright villainous, such as the state-sponsored murder of the disabled through cutting vital welfare programs. Be warned, that link is not for the faint of heart.

So when election day came around on Thursday, the people voted, and due to the astoundingly ridiculous way in which the electoral system works in this country, the coalition government became a Conservative majority one instead. The party that has been running this country into the ground, cutting taxes for the wealthy while trying to “save money” by letting the most vulnerable in society starve to death, has come back into power, stronger than before.

Understandably, I am more than a little upset about this.

I am also ashamed. I am ashamed that so many people in my country decided to waste their votes on a government who doesn’t care about them. It wasn’t even the majority – only 11.3 million people voted for the Conservatives, which is roughly 1 in 5 people of voting age. Of course, one in three people of voting age didn’t even bother to vote at all.

My vote did not matter. My local MP, whose voting track record is full of increasing taxes on the poor while lowering taxes on the rich, won by almost twenty thousand votes more than the second-place candidate… whose policies are more of the same, but with more open racism. But I actually looked at who I would be voting for and I did not blindly check a box just because it was the same colour I’ve always checked.

In another five years we will have this chance again, to vote for something different, assuming that the country hasn’t been turned into a capitalist dystopia where only the reintroduction of fox hunting stops the wealthy aristocrats from chasing down the poor for sport. I am hopeful that, next time, people are going to do what is right instead of letting the powerful elite bully opinions into their heads.

Most of us do not want a Conservative government. Most of us do not need a Conservative government. But that is what we have, and until we can throw them out, we’re going to have to deal with them. So make sure their lives are not comfortable. Question everything they do. If they are trying to hide something, bring it out into the light. The complacency of the people is the shield that they hide behind. Don’t give them that shield. Give them the sword instead.