FOR the disabled community we didn’t feel this was the “most exciting election of a generation.”

Yes, it was unpredictable, but this produced a gut-churning sense of foreboding instead.

It was the £12 billion of welfare cuts that defined the election for us.

Minister after minister refused to say where, when or how the axe would fall — all part of the plan to further unsettle those reliant on benefits.

We all assumed that others were with us on this one, that they could see the rise in inequality, the sanctions, suicides and rise in use of foodbanks.

It was false hope, of course, because as we soon found out great swathes of the country couldn’t care less.

“I believe in austerity,” a businessman said on TV. “No pain, no gain.”

At 10pm, those exit polls dropped like a weight in our stomachs. Rather than the usual babble, chatter and laughter, social media fell silent, as thousands absorbed the awful news.

Eventually tweets appeared from my disabled friends, reminding everyone of the times when polls were way out, but also tweets, saying: “I hope to God this is wrong” and “I couldn’t cope, not with another Tory coalition.”

Nobody at this point thought they would achieve a majority, and we all hoped against hope that the polls were wildly inaccurate, no matter what the expert at the BBC said.

Over the next long and painful hours, result after result confirmed the exit polls, with the SNP roaring as MPs were toppled.

Finally, in a horrible, incomprehensible twist, the Tories had a working majority — a “pumped up” David Cameron hailing the “sweetest victory” of all.

The disabled community were getting distressed. It was easy to see those who, like me, were hanging on in the hope of a change, those of us who had no other support, no savings or family who could help us out.

Polly Toynbee wrote in the Guardian on May 9: “Each time Labour fails, the key issue is not their ejected MPs or the great Westminster game, but the hardship imposed on the low-paid and the hard-pressed.”

A defiant tweet reached me: “The fight carries on,” it read, but many of us didn’t feel like fighting back, even with the thought of the barbaric injustices that lay ahead.

As dawn broke, I peered out of my blinds at this strange, blue, alien world — I was aware a target had once again been painted on my back.

I listened later to Cameron, jubilant outside No 10, where in a in a carefully worded statement he promised everything to “those willing to work hard.”

Normally, I would be shouting at the TV but it was at this point, with tears stinging my eyes, I went to bed.

• Ruth F Hunt is author of The Single Feather (Pilrig Press).