We're gonna need a new electorate…

Dick Tuck, I think it was, once gritted his teeth in the face of an electoral defeat and muttered that 'the people have spoken, the bastards'.

The same sentiment is raging around the liberal and leftwing corner of the world that I inhabit, with the added implication in some cases that what we need is a new electorate, not a new party or policy. I am in the happy position (if possible) of never having had any illusions about my own place in the political world, nor that of the Great British Public. Once in a blue moon something I passionately believe in becomes briefly fashionable and then goes away again, just like my lifelong attachment to v-neck ganseys and corduroy is occasionally mirrored in the fashion world and then goes away again for another decade or two. The confluence of weird cultural, social and political pressures that made me what I am – plus those regular pedagogical beatings suffered in headteachers' offices and the playground – also blessed me with the awareness that I will always be out of step with the majority. This doesn't necessarily make me feel any better, and it always carries the temptation to become either smug or a Vanguardist, but it does mean that blows like today's election results aren't freighted with an element of surprise.

There are two common responses to defeat on this scale: either the public are fools, or knaves - Steve Bell's cartoon responding to John Major's surprise victory in 1992 tends towards the foolish diagnosis. It's a Gramscian reaction, I suppose. Gramsci sat in a fascist prison cell in 1920-30s Italy and asked himself why the people repeatedly supported policies and parties which acted against their economic interest, despite the efforts of generations of Marxists. His answer in The Prison Notebooks was culture: that the combined forces of religion, politics, education, the arts, sport and all the non-economic aspects of our lives produced a version of 'reality' that persuaded the masses to act in the interests of a dominant elite and against their own. A crude – though not necessarily inaccurate – version of this is the argument that American conservatism has successfully persuaded poor Americans that 40 years of earnings decline is less important than abortion or immigration.

It's hard, this morning, not to take that line. I live in a poor, left-behind city. It is overwhelmingly working-class and has a large immigrant and first and second-generation population. Skilled jobs are increasingly rare and where they do exist, they're subsidised by a council suffering massive funding cuts, and by the European Union. The day after the EU referendum I was in leave-voting Abertawe/Swansea, where every new building bore a plaque with the EU flag marking where the money came from. I thought then, and think now, that none of the people voting Conservative or Leave will ever be the priority of an English Conservative administration. The Conservatives (much like New Labour) have idealised a working-class electorate that is racist, paranoid, selfish and bitter, thus bringing this electorate into being. They will throw them enough red meat to keep the votes flowing, while continuing to serve primarily the finance sector's insatiable demands for deregulation and an ever-smaller state. Britannia Unchained, the collection of essays by Raab and his cronies is essential reading here: it explicitly describes the British workforce as lazy and ignorant, and makes clear their belief in the abolition of the state beyond nuclear weapons and a legal system designed to protect capital. This is the world of V for Vendetta: the hedge-fund economy represented by Jacob-Rees Mogg and untethered from the rest of us will dictate policy, while an electorate that has proved it just wants things 'done' will be encouraged to look the other way by the most cynical policies Dominic Cummings (who at least is honest, in a weird way) can dream up.

The Conservative campaign made this clear: environmental collapse is upon us but a denialist party didn't bother making even the weakest statement in favour of prevention or adaptation. It treated the regulated media sector with total contempt, and the BBC responded like a beaten dog, failing in basic journalistic duties such as fact-checking. The private media did what it always does – monster a Labour Party that threatened its economic interests, while Labour ran a campaign of staggering naivety.

The Tory campaign won because it was simple. It ignored the pressing problems and blamed the rest – despite being in government for a decade – on easy targets that made no demands on an electorate that always wants to put off a reckoning. Foreigners; IRA-loving killjoys; 'liberal elites'. The genius of this is that there will always be such enemies. When Brexit is the disaster that it absolutely will be, the government will blame an EU conspiracy aided by Remainer enemies within. The world is a complicated place: Labour made the mistake of saying so, rather than pandering to the demands of an electorate that wants to be told that it has no responsibility, that everything's going to be great, that it's somebody else's fault.

Of course there are other reasons. The UK's kindergarten electoral system which prefers dramatic moments and confrontation to boring old compromise and negotiation; an entire political class which hasn't addressed deindustrialisation despite having generations in which to do so; a Labour Party balanced between right wing machine politicians with nothing inspiring or interesting to say and left wing ones who have all the answers as long as you don't start from here.

I'm left with an MP who took office having been exposed in the national press as a thief and a hypocrite. My students - some of whom voted for this outcome - are going to find that their university, their subject, their careers and their communities are not just beneath the notice of our new rulers, but the targets of scorn and hostility.

Are there any consolations? For me, yes. An Ireland peacefully united is inching closer; Scottish independence looks like really happening. Not much consolation for me, living in England and sharing the consequences with everyone else, but the self-inflicted dismemberment of the UK seems both overdue and good for the world – it's long been a rogue state, and deserves to wither away until it comes to terms with being a small, post-imperial polity with much to apologise for. However, this doesn't even start to make up for the knowledge that students, friends and neighbours don't have enough to eat now, let alone in six months' time. Being right shouldn't give anyone a warm glow, especially me.

If we thought 2010-19 was bad, buckle up and be kind to each other.