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Besides being important in themselves, the trade talks between Britain and the United States which began this week are symbolic of the opportunities that should become available as we leave the European Union. For years we have dealt with the US, our biggest single customer, under burdensome tariffs and other regulation — but we had no choice. The EU handled trade policy and it never succeeded in completing a trade deal with any of its major trade partners. Britain, by contrast, has always been more global than Europe in its outlook. The vote for Brexit was, among other things, a vote to raise our sights to more distant horizons. At the time of the referendum, a bilateral trade deal with the US looked unlikely for political reasons.

To everyone's huge surprise, Jeremy Corbyn has come out as being quite a hard-line Eurosceptic, despite his tireless campaigning last year during the referendum. He has also further cemented his party's newfound respect for immigration restriction, attacking the importing of cheap labour from abroad. Whether any of this makes any impact on his legion of supporters, who seem to project their own vision of what he should be onto reality, I don't know; the Labour coalition already seems so incoherent but then I've given up trying to understand how politics work; it's like there's been a writer's strike up in heaven and nothing makes sense anymore.

Among the many points of contention that arose during the election was Labour’s declaration that people earning more than £70k would be expected to contribute more in taxes should Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister. Fair enough, you might say – £70k is more than double the average wage. However, it’s not gross income that determines how wealthy you feel – it’s net income, i.e., after tax and benefits have been deducted and added respectively. Consider two similar families; both have two children and both rent a three-bedroom house in Hackney, North London. In each case, one of the adults works while their partner stays at home.

Every political leader and government goes through a phase when their spin doctors feel they need a relaunch. For some, the relaunch comes after a number of good years. For Theresa May, her relaunch came on the anniversary of her becoming Prime Minister - and after a rather tumultuous year. As relaunches go, this wasn’t the standard speech where a leader at least gives the impression that they are moving onwards and upwards. Instead, it felt as though May was trying to make the best of a decision to downsize that she hadn’t taken. She couldn’t even promise to implement the recommendations of the Taylor Report, which she launched alongside her promise to stay on the path that she set out in her first speech in Downing Street a year go.

Just a few weeks ago, the Conservatives triumphed in the local government elections and Theresa May was hailed as an all-conquering Brexit Boudicca who could do no wrong. Now, after her general election humiliation, an opposite view has taken hold: that the government is a disaster, the country is in an irredeemable mess, Brexit has been derailed and nothing can go right. This is a sign that parliamentary recess is overdue; a great many people are -exhausted and a little emotional. But the facts, for those with an eye to see them, do not give grounds for such pessimism. The Tories have lost their majority and deserved to do so after an awful campaign.

Tomorrow Theresa May will present a Queen’s Speech that doesn’t have the formal support of a majority of the House of Commons. Her negotiations with the DUP still haven’t concluded, with party sources this afternoon warning the Conservatives that they won’t be ‘taken for granted’ and criticising the way May and her team have conducted the negotiations. It’s almost as though the DUP know a thing or two about how to negotiate: certainly a thing or two more than Theresa May and her team. Party sources even dropped hints about the implications of these negotiations for May’s success in Brussels, hitting one of the most sensitive spots for the Tory leader.

What can Theresa May put in the Queen’s Speech next week? The Prime Minister was always a cautious sort who wouldn’t put anything before Parliament that didn’t have a sure chance of passing - and that was when she had a majority. Now, she firstly needs to propose a set of bills that the DUP will back her on in the Queen’s Speech vote and then again in the Commons when each individual bill goes through - or that Labour will support her on. And her party isn’t in the greatest mood at the moment, which will make for difficult internal battles over the detail of legislation, too.

Nobody inside CCHQ was prepared for election night’s 10 p.m. exit poll. Lynton Crosby’s last text to me predicted that we were going to ‘do well’, which according to our expectations would mean a Conservative majority of more than 60. A late projection, based on data from the ground and Jim Messina’s modelling, suggested we would win 371 seats, giving us a majority of 92. In the end, the Conservatives got their highest share of the vote since 1983, and more votes than Tony Blair managed in any of his elections, yet still we ended up with a hung parliament. Skilful leadership may deliver stability, but the absence of an overall majority means the nature of the Brexit deal the government negotiates is more uncertain.

Go back ten years and you could never imagine green campaigners greeting Michael Gove’s return to government with a mixture of contempt and despair. It feels like another age, but in the last decade Gove, Cameron and Osborne decided the only way to stop the Tory party remaining in opposition was to force it to come to terms with modern Britain. ‘Detoxifying the brand’ – to use their advertising agency jargon – meant Conservatives should stop giving the impression that ethnic minorities weren’t truly British. They should help all people, rather than just the comfortable. Most of all, Conservatives must stop being John Stuart Mill’s ‘Stupid Party,’ which resists new ideas merely because they are new.