For some, general election night 2024 was a sweet dream; for others, it was an absolute nightmare. For all, it had that trance-like quality, a soupcon of belief that, whatever had happened, it would all fade away on waking up.
And what a long-awaited and unsurprising Labour Party victory it is. Sir Keir Starmer, the incoming prime minister, may not be the flashiest politician around but he radiates the encouraging signs that substance is more important than style.
While Labour has won easily, the commentators spent much of yesterday debating whether this was more the Conservative Party losing than Labour being victorious.
Despite Labour’s huge majority in the House of Commons, it certainly appears the former. However you look at things, it was a bloody experience for the many Tory cabinet secretaries, ministers and MPs booted out unceremoniously — and rightly so.
There was clearly a very large protest vote against the Conservatives. While Labour will understandably be crowing about its mandate and how many electorates it gained from its old foe, another interesting story is how many seats the Liberal Democrats picked up, and how sizeable the percentage swing towards the right-wing Reform Party was in some electorates, often matching or coming close to the percentage loss by the Tories.
Amidst the speeches from defeated Conservative candidates there were apologies for not listening to the public and for failing to live up to the trust placed in them. But there were still signs of Tory arrogance from some, an appearance of surprise that they would in fact one day be held accountable and be replaced.
It cannot be overstated how eagerly anticipated this British election has been. Fourteen years of increasingly shambolic and dishonest Conservative rule has ground many Britons into the dirt.
The United Kingdom’s infrastructure is failing badly (sound familiar?), along with its public services. There are major issues with the overworked National Health Service, with the ageing, crumbling rail networks, and with urban poverty, homelessness and a worsening housing crisis.
Under the Tories, the environment has also suffered badly, especially rivers, waterways and some beaches left swimming in sewage.
Their inevitable defeat can largely be placed at the feet of some awful and dishonest, callous and unempathetic people. The list includes former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, former home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, and former chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng.
While outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak hung on to his North Yorkshire seat with a more than 12,000-vote margin, he conceded victory and in a speech said the Conservative defeat was "sobering" and "I am sorry".
Earlier on election day, The Guardian put it well, saying even if the Conservatives were in this contest unopposed, they would still come second.
That same modus operandi was stated by former Tory justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland, who lost his Swindon South seat to Labour. Keeping a lid on his anger, he said the "electoral armageddon" was partly due to "circus politics" and colleagues writing scathing opinion articles which made it look like they were doing their job, instead of actually doing it.
Such a landscape-changing election as this offers up many stories and angles. Three of the other interesting outcomes are how badly the Scottish Nationalist Party has done, losing most of its seats, that the Tories have lost all their electorates in Wales, and that voter turnout is believed to be the worst in 20 years.
Labour’s election, which is of similar magnitude to the 1997 landslide won by Tony Blair, will bring back some hope where it has been increasingly absent during the past decade or so.
In a part of the world where politics seems to be taking a sharp and concerning swerve towards the hard right, it brings some good news for us all.
Once again, Britain stands alone from Europe and goes its own sweet way.
