Monthly archives of “July 2024

The General Election, 2024

This photo was shot on the day my wife and I took afternoon tea to mark the turning of a page: a month later, we’d be parents and this was our acknowledgment that this kind of life would be out of reach for a while.

By the time our daughter was born, we were already five years into a Conservative government. A party that gave us austerity, Brexit, and an aggressive language of dehumanisation for immigrants, foreigners, the poor, disabled, homeless, and queer. And so much more.

I would very much like to turn another page today. To tell a new story, a different story. A more hopeful and loving story. For my daughter, for my wife, for me, for the people I love, and for millions of people I’ve never met but who deserve the dignity and joy denied them in the climate the last 14 years of Farage-poisoned Conservative rule has created.

We can choose to bring that kind of life into our reach.