After the Conservatives’ bruising defeat, Broadstairs writer Melissa Todd outlines her hopes for the new Labour government - and what the rise of Reform could mean in future…

Did you stay up late last Thursday night, giggling and wallowing in schadenfreude? I did.

My favourite part of the election was the slow hand clap Liz Truss received for refusing to take the stage for fear she’d lost, before watching her face twitch as she did the maths and discovered she had lost, then rushing away without shaking the victor’s hand or giving a generous concession speech. So vulgar. So undignified. So typical.

Keir Starmer's victory speech made evident his dedication to public duty and serving the people, refreshing after the 14 years we've endured of politicians serving themselves. It embodied that 19th century conservative (small c) ideal of allowing Britons to quietly pursue their own ambitions and preferences, and it made me hopeful, and teary, as did Sunak’s.

What are your hopes for this shiny new government? For all Starmer has underpromised and made a virtue of his total tediousness, I rather hope he is secretly another Clement Attlee, a man who was renowned for being insufferably dull, played up to it, and still managed to get the NHS and the welfare state established while his critics mocked. (“An empty car arrived at Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out of it”, Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, although in fact he didn’t, being rather a dull old codger himself).

Let's see a few radical changes straight away, please. MPs swear allegiance to the King, currently, instead of which perhaps they could swear allegiance to the public, undertaking to tell the truth and behave decently, an oath they would be required to repeat at regular intervals, with severe consequences should their promises be broken.

After reckless pandemic spending, partygate and the betting scandal, we’ve all started to despair of any sense of decency in our public servants, which doubtless explains in part the low turnout figures, and “they’re all the same” mentality which I heard over and over in the run up to the election.

We're all quivering like gaslit abuse victims twisting away from the next body blow. If the new government could restore faith in public life they’d have earned my vote many times over.

In truth, we can't rely on politicians to make all the changes we need: many of the problems we now face are too enormous and complex for a handful of bods at the top to solve. Issues like climate change, mass migration, social care, mental health, AI, need to be considered collectively, since often they are caused by global forces outside the UK government’s control.

We need to think differently about how we can fix them on an individual, as well as global, level. Rather than this government merely serving us, I hope they might allow us the opportunity to serve ourselves.

Next, we need to consider another electoral system. It's scandalous that each Reform MP needed 800,000 votes to get elected, while each Labour MP needed 30,000; that Labour got twice as many share of the seats as it did share of the votes. That isn’t any kind of democracy.

In the past it’s been claimed that First Past The Post leads to strong stable governments and effective, united oppositions. That no longer feels true. There are thousands, literally thousands, of different voting systems in use across the world, each with different disadvantages, but few give such extraordinary power to a mere handful of voices in marginal seats. Reform came second in 98 constituencies. 98! Even if, as has been claimed, some of their candidates aren’t real people, five MPs simply doesn’t represent that strength of feeling.

And it does need to be represented, whatever your feelings about the Reform party. Either you believe in democracy or you don’t, and if you do, Reform’s adherents deserve to be heard. You can’t lock democracy’s doors on people whose voices you disagree with. Morality aside, it only nurtures a sense of grievance and resentment from which they derive power and mystique.

Give them the chance to prove themselves, subject to full scrutiny. I’d like to see Nigel Farage become Minister for Brexit and sort all the problems that leaving the EU has engendered, rather than lurk on the sidelines, blaming everyone else for its failings. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Starmer is talking about a decade of change. But he won’t necessarily be given a decade. And, with the Conservative Party decimated, when the electorate’s inevitable disaffection begins, the far-right will be lurking, ready to rush into the void.