Things can only get worse...

WELL, as I glance at the clock it's approaching 8.30pm, nearly a full 24 hours after the polls closed on the 2015 General Election.

And just like receiving any sort of bad news, I'm still in a state of shock.

Shock that the result could have been so bad.

If I'm truthful, in my heart of hearts I really didn't believe Ed Miliband could win an overall majority for the Labour Party.

Friends who have known me for decades or maybe a few years know precisely where my colours have been nailed since I first became politically aware in the early 1980s.

I was brought up in a loving home in 'leafy Lydiate'. This outpost of North Merseyside could likely be considered conservative in both senses of the word. It is just 10 miles from Liverpool City Centre but in many ways it could conceivably be a million or more.

Crime was low, things were quiet and people just got on with their lives without fuss. My Dad was in full-time employment as an overseas business manager of a successful and long-established Liverpool-based company, and although we just went on one major holiday for a fortnight away in all those years, me and my Sister wanted for nothing. Life wasn't easy, I'm sure, for my parents, but they provided everything we needed. So it really should have been a Conservative home when it came to elections.

But it never was.

My Dad could see the bigger picture. He and his family might be doing OK, if not spectacularly, but others - millions of others - around the country patently weren't. So I became aware of where my parents' political allegiances lay - and I understood them.

Fairness for all was paramount.

I'm too young to remember the General Elections that happened in my early years - 1970 and the two in 1974 - but I can recall the one in 1979 and distinctly remember my 41-year-old Dad berating Margaret Thatcher as he watched her on the TV give her infamous 'St Francis Of Assisi' speech from the steps of No10 Downing Street.

By the time the next Election came around in 1983, I was approaching my 16th birthday and was beginning to have a much firmer grasp about politics. It seemed obvious that the Tories' victory that year was built solely on the bedrock of support garnered from the appalling and completely avoidable Falklands War 13 months before. Because domestically, the country was going to the dogs.

So 1985 arrived and the only major holiday we went on as a family - Jersey for a fortnight. I guess it must have cost my parents a fortune because it's not a cheap place to go to, even today. It was a great two weeks away, a holiday I will always remember with much fondness

And 1985 was also the year when I first heard Billy Bragg.

I can still remember him singing Between The Wars on Top Of The Pops. In many ways it was a 'Road To Damascus' moment. Two days later I bought his four-track EP on a seven-inch single, and the rest, as they say in clichéd terms, is history.

My political left leanings grew over the years. I was distraught after the 1987 General Election when the loathsome Thatcher someone got voted in for a third term. And when 1992 came around and those of us on the left thought Neil Kinnock was going to win for Labour after what appeared to be a magnificent campaign with all the right arguments to win power, I was absolutely devastated.

Going into the office that Friday morning was grim beyond words, especially when I knew some work colleagues had pencilled their 'X' in the Conservative box.

Five years later, it truly was a new dawn - or so we all hoped. Labour's landslide success across the length and breadth of Britain made me so happy. And for a few years, things were good.

The minimum wage came in for a start and Labour seemed to be showing they really were the party for those who needed help the most.

And then it all started to go horribly wrong.

September 11, 2001 changed so many things and when the war in Iraq began in 2003, Labour's connection with its core supporters was irrevocably damaged.

Yes, they won General Elections in both 2001 and 2005 but things were starting to go sour. The defeat in 2010 was inevitable as night following day. The party were blamed - by the powerful Tory press - for being pretty much wholly responsible for the economic crash of 2008. Which they weren't.

But when you chuck enough mud, a fair amount will stick in the end.

So although the Tories had to rely on a crutch supplied by the Liberal Democrats, I wasn't that shocked when Gordon Brown left office in May 2010.

So now, exactly 60 months later, we've discovered the Conservatives can walk fine on their own.

How did it happen? By my reckoning, things are far, far worse than they were five springs ago. I can't give an accurate number of them, but the mere fact that foodbanks have now entered the lexicon and can be seen in places up and down this 'First World' country should tell you everything.

Shameful doesn't come close.

Chuck in the dire condition our magnificent National Health Service is in - and I'm blaming the uncaring Conservatives completely for this - and that's two examples that make me despair and shudder how David Cameron won a second term in office.

For me personally, my workplace has suffered a swathe of cuts with all its inevitable knock-on consequences, all of them negative.

So it brings us around to last night. Obviously I was more than happy to put my 'X' in the Labour box and, thankfully, Bill Esterson was returned to Parliament - with an increased majority too.

However, away from the 'People's Republic of Merseyside' and one or two other like-minded enclaves, the story was much different.

Labour's messages - and Miliband - just didn't connect with many parts of England.

And Scotland.

There's no doubt in my mind that Labour paid an incredibly high price for siding with the Tories in the referendum for independence vote last September,

The Scottish Nationalist Party - regarded as a bunch of oddballs not that long ago (even in Scotland) - remembered the 'betrayal' by Labour and gave them an incredible hammering winning virtually every single one of the 59 seats on offer.

It was a chastening evening for all Labour supporters north of the border and in many ways, not that unpredictable. Brown might have 'saved the Union' last autumn, but his actions then may well have contributed in a major way to the trouncing Labour received in its natural heartlands.

No Labour MPs in Glasgow? No, surely that's not true?!

Politics in this country has undergone a massive sea-change in the last day. Three leaders have departed - Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage. To my mind, this is unprecedented.

And, somehow, the politics of fear - and total selfishness - have won the day as Cameron has managed to win a working majority. No-one, not even the Tories' biggest supporters, could have predicted that.

But this is what we are left with for the next five years.

The country is more split than the 1980s when it was basically the Labour North and Scotland against the Conservative South.

Today, the only thing that's changed - albeit significantly - is that it's now the Labour North, SNP Scotland and the Conservative South.

As things stand, I really don't think Labour will win enough SNP seats back come the next General Election - likely to happen in the spring of 2020 - to make any impact on a national level.

Mind you, by the time that happens we could have voted to leave the European Union (I hope to God we won't) and have a floppy blond-haired dangerous toff as the resident in No10 Downing Street.

So what am I going to do? At the moment I feel so powerless. I want the Labour Party to throw off its shackles, say a collective 'sod off' to the middle-ground voters and move properly to the left and reconnect once more with its traditional voters who have defected to the abhorrent UKIP.

But I am also intelligent enough to realise that the 'middle-ground' is where elections and therefore power is won and lost.

When D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better boomed out in 1997 as the soundtrack to Labour's overwhelming success, we really thought they would be.

And, for a time, they were.

I cannot for the life of me imagine that with the Tories. In fact, it's going to be completely the opposite.

Unless you're rich, selfish and have no care for people who genuinely need helping in this country.

But then, you wouldn't know that if you're a Conservative, would you?