I went without food as a child – 22 years on, things must change

Growing up in Manchester in the ’80s was hard. Poverty was rife on my council estate, and there was real poverty in my house. Sometimes I went without food. On those occasions, I would pester my mates to let me go round theirs for tea.

During the week, the only guaranteed hot meal my friends and I would get was at school. I often went to school without breakfast, so I’d be starving by the time we got to the school gates. This is what life was like for many working-class kids.

It makes me wonder what Boris Johnson would’ve thought of people like me back then. After all, I was a working-class single mum in my teens – the kind of parent he described as raising “ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children”. But that’s not my son, or the children of anyone I know. Johnson’s comments show nothing but contempt for women and working-class people.