OPINION - This election was a brutal revenge shellacking for the many sins of the Conservatives

NO, it really isn’t like 1997. Not even close. The morning after that landslide, I met a pillar of the Tory party in the office. He beamed at me: “Doesn’t feel like we’re under a Socialist tyranny, does it?” The sense of buoyancy which followed Sir Tony Blair’s victory did not last but it was real. This time round, the feeling is simple relief rather than elation. The PM, as we must get used to calling Sir Keir Starmer, tried very hard for uplift: “Walk into the morning”, he declared at about five in the morning, “the sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day, shining once again, on a country with the opportunity after 14 years to get its future back.” A nation blinked sleepily, then went back to bed.