Britain awoke on Friday morning to an electoral map that had turned an emphatic shade of Tory blue, and to a country as starkly divided as ever – this time into those delighted by a thumping Boris Johnson election victory and those despairing at the prospect of a rightwing Conservative government, a hard exit from the European Union and ever more pressing questions over the sustainability of the UK itself.

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The brutally unambiguous exit polls on Thursday evening, which left no room for hope of a hung parliament or any reprieve from Brexit, meant there had been some time overnight, at least, to process the result. But the scale of the Conservative victory still held the power to astonish on Friday morning.

“Just think,” Michael Gove told gleeful Tory activists shortly after 7am, “next year both the Durham miner’s gala and the Notting Hill carnival will take place in seats represented by Conservative MPs!”

In fact, he was wrong about that: the Tories may have won a surprise victory in Durham North West, unseating the shadow employment secretary, Laura Pidcock, who had been groomed as a potential successor to Jeremy Corbyn, but the famous socialist march takes place in a neighbouring constituency.

His broader point, however, stood. As well as being defeated in Kensington, the home of Grenfell Tower, Labour’s so-called “red wall” – a ring of formerly rock-solid constituencies traditionally seen as the foundation of the party’s support in the north – had crumbled. Both sides were still coming to terms with what that meant for the country.

Moments later, and back to his bumptious worst, or best, Johnson took to the stage in front of a sign that read, audaciously: “The People’s Government.”

“Well,” he said. “We did it! We pulled it off, didn’t we? With this mandate and this majority we will at last be able to do what?”

His obliging crowd duly roared: “Get Brexit done!” That three-word mantra was now, he said, “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people”, and the UK would leave Europe before 31 January, “no ifs, no buts, no maybes”.

The prime minister did make an attempt at conciliation, however, repeatedly referring to “this one-nation government” and telling his Conservative colleagues that “we must change ... we must recognise the reality that we now speak as a one-nation Conservative party, literally for everyone from Woking to Workington”.

To those on the left, however, Johnson’s victory meant devastation, as #notmygovernment and #notmyprimeminister trended on Twitter throughout the day. The night was particularly brutal for the Liberal Democrats, whose leader, Jo Swinson, lost her own seat to a buoyant SNP, which took 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats.

Corbyn had conceded, in his acceptance speech in his home seat of Islington North shortly after 3am, that it was “obviously a very disappointing night for the Labour party” and pledged that he would stand down as Labour leader after “a process ... of reflection” for the party.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn leaves his home the morning after the night before. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

On the morning airwaves and on social media, however, the battle for the future direction of the party had already begun, with Corbyn loyalists insisting that a popular manifesto had been undone by Brexit, while weary candidates, both those who had been successful and those now out of a job, spoke again and again of an antipathy to the party’s leader on the doorstep that had proved fatal for Labour’s election hopes.

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The shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, toured the TV studios, insisting: “People on the doorstep weren’t complaining about our policies, and we wouldn’t have had the policies ... if it weren’t for Jeremy’s leadership.”

But Phil Wilson, who lost Tony Blair’s former seat of Sedgefield to the Tories, said attempts by the leadership to put the result down to Brexit was “mendacious nonsense”. “Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was a bigger problem. To say otherwise is delusional. The party’s leadership went down like a lead balloon on the doorstep,” he said.

There was support for both positions on Friday morning in Conisbrough, a hilly Doncaster town within the Don valley, one of the high-profile northern constituencies to fall to the Tories.

“I don’t see it as a vote for the Conservatives, I see it as a vote for Brexit,” said one retired woman shopping on the high street.

“It’s the first time I’ve done it. My dad was a miner, and his dad was a miner, and I’ve always voted Labour. I think if there had been another leader, I would have voted for them again.” Asked what it was in particular that she disliked about Corbyn, she replied: “There’s something about his mannerisms.”

John Glarvey, owner of Bella’s Butties sandwich shop in Conisbrough’s town centre, said he was glad “the community has finally realised the miner’s strike has finished”.

“When you ask a lot of people around here why they vote Labour, it’s always been because of that or because their granddad did. It’s good to see change ... I’d like the NHS to get sorted, but I don’t believe Labour would’ve actually put the money they were offering in.”

But at pet store IGO pets, Alice Dann, a 19-year-old covering shifts during a Christmas break from her studies at the University of Hull, said her heart had sunk when she awoke to the result. “My family aren’t really Labour voters but I’ve always wanted to vote for them since I was in school. I liked their policies on tuition fees and helping younger people out,” she said.

There were similar reactions in Wrexham, north Wales – another formerly solid Labour seat that elected a Conservative for the first time in its history. Mike Evans, whose family has run the ME Butchers business since 1911, described Johnson’s victory as “fantastic news”.

He has voted for Labour in the past but believes the Tories will bring about the change he thinks is needed in north Wales. “I didn’t believe in Corbyn’s policies – his changes to public services went too far. We’d have gone backwards.”

Asked if he liked Johnson, Evans sighed. “I think he’s the best of a bad bunch but it’s brilliant that the town has turned blue. It’s been Labour for too long. We need a change. Things can’t get worse.”

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In Peterborough, where the Tory gain from Labour meant the constituency had its fourth MP in three years, Brexit-supporting builder Martin Allpress said he had voted Labour all his life, but had abstained this time citing Corbyn’s “weakness”, antisemitism and his suspicion that Corbyn would not have delivered Brexit.

“When the English people voted leave, wham!” he said. “I know it can’t happen overnight, but it’s like our opinion didn’t matter.”

“I feel so sad about [Labour’s defeat],” said Zoe Bunter, a charity fundraiser and church volunteer. “I feel sad for the people who are vulnerable and those on the lowest rungs of society. It feels like they have been ignored.”

England and Wales aside, voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland – where the DUP had a dreadful night – were also coming to terms with their new political realities on Friday.

“The SNP is on a roll,” said Larry MacDougall, a retired museums worker who has lived with his wife Moira in Swinson’s seat of East Dunbartonshire for 52 years. “People are fed up with being dictated to from down south.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jo Swinson reacts as she loses her East Dumbartonshire seat. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

His wife had voted for Swinson, who was unexpectedly squeezed out by the SNP’s Amy Callaghan, but MacDougall said the SNP gains across Scotland indicated that voters there were ready for a second referendum. “I’m not a nationalist. I just want my own government, then I can make up my own mind.”

An emboldened Nicola Sturgeon later addressed Johnson directly at an SNP press conference to insist that a second referendum was now a “democratic right” for Scots.

“Let me be clear. This is not simply a demand that I or the SNP are making. It is the right of the people of Scotland – and you as the leader of a defeated party in Scotland have no right to stand in the way.”

In Northern Ireland, more nationalist MPs than unionists were elected for the first time in its history. In a brutal comedown from its king-making role during the last, brief, parliament, the DUP suffered a humiliating night, losing two MPs, including Nigel Dodds, the party’s leader in parliament.

“Heartbroken,” said Charlotte Dickey, 77, a retired charity worker who had voted for Dodds. “I voted for Nigel to keep us under the crown of England,” said her husband, James, 79.

With Sinn Fein’s share of the vote having also tumbled, there was pressure on Friday for the two largest parties to restore power-sharing to the defunct Stormont assembly.

The SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, who won one of two seats for his party in Foyle, said the parties had to get back around the negotiating table. “Everyone knows what has to happen. We must take responsibility. No longer is it good to stand on the sidelines. No longer can we look in the window. Let’s get on with it.”

Shortly after 3pm, in front of the tall Downing Street Christmas tree, Johnson emerged in front of the cameras to make his first formal statement as a nationally elected prime minister and set out the priorities for what he called “our new one-nation government, a people’s government”.

It was a speech sprinkled with conciliation, careful to offer gratitude to Labour voters who had lent the Conservatives their vote, and to stress respect for “your feelings of warmth and gratitude” towards Europe. Whether they believe him or not, after a campaign littered with lies and disinformation, will be open to question.

His government’s first priority would be the NHS, he said, and it would “unite and level up” the country, “bringing together the whole of this incredible United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland”.

Britain now has five years to discover the truth or otherwise of those promises.

Reporting team: Steven Morris, Robert Booth, Amy Walker, Libby Brooks, Rory Carroll