“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young…” I watched this most tumultuous of election nights unfold with five millennials, clued up and glued to several social-media screens at once, whooping and cheering while I bent my ear to the politicians and pundits on the BBC. On TV, jaws dropped lower with each passing hour as the exit polls’ prediction of a hung Parliament came true. The kids took it all in their stride. For the first time in years I feel less guilty about the mess we’re leaving them. Instead I feel respect and gratitude to them for stepping up, rejecting cynicism, keeping hope alive.
It’s early days—hours even—and I haven’t had much sleep. Theresa May is still prime minister (though she may not be for long). The Tories plan to form a minority government with the support of the ultraconservative Democratic Unionist Party—not a pretty prospect. The Germans are saying the Brexit negotiations must go ahead on schedule, though it’s not clear who’ll conduct them. But Britain’s political landscape, buckled and riven by Brexit, has just gone through another irreversible upheaval—and this time it’s the left that’s surged up through the cracks.
