So, there we have it: the bankers, newspaper owners and other vested interests have won and those who had the temerity to have a spare room or have committed the crime of not having a job will now see no end to their misery.

That Labour did not put up a credible opposition during the last parliament must now be accepted. The Lib Dems have, as expected, paid the price for their treasonously brief fling in power, endorsing Tory excesses.

But above all, it is the political illiteracy of the voting population as a whole, who have now, even though few of them will benefit, endorsed the continued shift from state provision to private. Schools, hospitals, the NHS as a whole will now be decimated in another five years of ideological mayhem. The ghettoisation of London will be completed.

I’m 65 today. Happy birthday? Not.

Alan Gent
Cheadle, Cheshire

David Cameron, aided by the shamelessly biased and distorted coverage of the Tory press, his half-hearted attempts at regulation clearly abandoned, has somehow managed to claw his way to a wafer-thin majority.

This will inevitably lead to months of instability provoked by the europhobes in his own party, who will stop at nothing to bring the rashly promised and completely unnecessary EU referendum forward. Meanwhile, after having cynically demonised the Scots at every turn for narrow party advantage and provoking the SNP near-whitewash, he hypocritically seeks to reach out to them with belated talk of one nation.

Our outdated and unrepresentative voting system has handed power to the one party that will do nothing to change it, save for a few tweaks to boost their position in future.

We face a dispiriting five years in which the real losers will be not only the working poor, but also our international standing, social justice, social cohesion, decency and democracy.

Doubtless Mr Cameron is feeling pretty smug; I feel physically sick.

Ian Richards
Birmingham

It seems the party of the foxhunter may have a majority to overturn the Hunting Act. David and Samantha Cameron and the Royal Family must be thrilled; they will be able to take up hunting again.

Fox, hare, mink and deer hunters will be whooping for joy, along with those who enjoy culling badgers for no good reason other than that shooting wildlife is their passion. For a while, these pathetic wildlife-killers must have been awfully worried that Labour would get in and put an end to their fun.

As for the Conservatives’ other victims, the ordinary people, have they forgotten the cuts to the NHS, the bedroom tax, pay cuts, zero hours? Perhaps they fell for the myth that the Tories are better at managing the economy than Labour.

The Tories’ plan for the economy will be the same as before, only with a vengeance, for Chancellor George Osborne will be busy planning even more new and inventive ways to squeeze every penny he can out of the poor, while ensuring his rich friends become even more rich and powerful – and we, the ordinary people, have let them.

But it is the animal victims I really feel sorry for, because while we had a choice they did not.

Helen Weeks
West Coker, Somerset

Labour: how did it all go so wrong?

What just happened? Nothing short of an establishment coup. A quiet one, as it would be in our country, but a coup nonetheless.

Miliband could not be allowed to win, posing a threat, as he did, to huge vested interests. He was promising to break up media monopolies and cap the profits of the big energy firms and the companies doing very nicely out of the NHS. He was threatening to raise taxes for the wealthiest and to end non-dom status.

Is it any surprise therefore that the full force of the establishment was mobilised against him? What Cameron says was a fair campaign was marred by lies, slurs, crudely exaggerated fears and personal attacks.

The end result is that Cameron, probably at heart a decent man, is now in deep hock to the forces which gave him victory. He can’t govern for the country: he must and will govern for them. Labour faces an existential crisis, and God help the rest of us.

Charles Barker
Coventry

With the appallingly Goebbels-esque media we have in Britain, and its relentless, carefully orchestrated character assassination of Ed Miliband, Labour always had to get its election campaign and strategy absolutely right: and it just didn’t, especially on effectively refuting the lies that 2010 was a “Labour recession/crisis”, and that we have anything approaching a genuine, soundly based “recovery”.

Fear, corporatocracy and narrow self-interest now tragically define the times; and with the 10-plus per cent Ukip voters to be attracted back to the Tories by 2020, Labour will have a mountain-range to climb next time, especially after the Tories legislate to update the electoral boundaries.

The Scots Nats also now have an open goal for independence. Indeed, Scotland might well soon be the only place to be for Britons of a left-progressive persuasion. Don’t be surprised if a mini-stampede to north of the border soon begins.

Dr Richard House
Stroud, Gloucestershire

When Nick Clegg opted to abandon his pledge on tuition fees many voters believed he chose power over integrity and planned their revenge that very day. They defected roughly equally to Conservatives and Labour.

Many voters want a Labour government, but do not support New Labour or the Blairite faction of the party. In England and Wales such people had no option, but in Scotland they did.

If Labour is to have a future it must be honest and offer a genuine alternative to Conservatives. This means that if it going to help the poorest in society, protect the NHS and cut the deficit then general levels of taxation must increase. The Tories have promised not to increase taxation, which ensures either massive cuts in every imaginable service or we will be heading towards the International Monetary Fund.

We live in interesting times!

Malcolm Howard
Banstead, Surrey

Many of us are reflecting grimly on what we have feared for a long time. You reap what you sow, and a quick dollop of fertiliser won’t change the crop.

Labour was poor in opposition, so poor that the worried conversations over the past five years became even more gloomy as the election approached. They were plainly out of touch with the electorate and unable to articulate a strong vision for the future. By contrast, Caroline Lucas was a star performer in the last parliament who both increased her majority and enhanced the national profile of her party. A neat summation of a fundamental lesson to be relearned.

Paula Jones
London SW20

Pundits and pollsters confounded

After the results of the general election, many will feel that it’s not just Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg who ought to be considering their positions: I do so hope that the vast army of pundits and pollsters are packing up their misleading opinions in their old kit bags and heading for a graceful, silent retirement.

Philip Mitchell
Winchester

How many nations was that?

David Cameron’s deeply cynical strategy of mobilising English xenophobia against the Scots has proved successful.Instant amnesia now enables him the morning after to claim to have run a positive campaign and to be a “one-nation Conservative”.

No matter how stupidly gullible he must think the electorate in England to be, the pity is that he appears to be right.

D Maughan Brown
York

So it’s official: David Cameron is the first Conservative two-nations prime minister.

David Clarke
Edinburgh

Clinging to a daft voting system

It seems we truly are a conservative nation. Conservative in that we have doggedly stuck to an absurd and outdated electoral system which has brought back into power a party which will do nothing to change it. We should all hang our heads in shame.

Andrew Colley
Halstead, Essex

Those voters, you can’t trust them

I am sure the good voters of England will be rewarded with an immediate increase in house prices.

Trevor Pateman
Brighton

The people have spoken. The bastards.

Conrad Cork
Leicester