Uk politics

Ever since Tony Blair handed the keys to No.10 over to Gordon Brown, the Labour party – and, by extension, the British left – has been in free fall. The general elections in 2010 and 2015 left us battered and bruised, and the Brexit vote seemed to be the coup de grace. Under Ed Miliband, the Labour party felt like it was headed for government, only to have victory snatched away, first by John Curtice’s exit poll and then by reality itself. This is the background to last night’s extraordinary resurgence, a triumph of socialist ideals that has – perhaps only for one golden evening – put the 'party' back in the Labour party.

The pound has plunged sharply on the exit poll, as markets start to come to terms with the idea that Theresa May might have blown it. It's 1.7 per cent down against the dollar, 1.8 per cent against the Euro - expect those gains to deepen if tonight's results confirm the results of the exit poll. For a simple reason: Theresa May asked for a general election to strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations. If the public refuses to do so, she will be hugely weakened in the biggest negotiation that any Prime Minister has had to undertake. If, indeed, she survives long enough to undertake it - which is by no means certain if she does worse than David Cameron managed to do against Ed Miliband.

For much of last night’s STV debate, the last such contest in Scotland in this election, it looked as though the headline story would be the manner in which Ruth Davidson was hammered by all the other Scottish party leaders. The Tory leader was taken to task over the government’s changes to tax credits and, in particular, the so-called ‘rape clause’. Valiantly as she tried to defend herself she was unavoidably on the back foot. And then Nicola Sturgeon changed the subject. According to the first minister, in a private conversation just after the Brexit referendum, Kezia Dugdale, the Labour leader, told Sturgeon that she and her party were now open to the idea of a second referendum on independence. That, children, is what a nationalist dead cat looks like.

It is not often, especially in the midst of what has been a grimly dreadful election campaign for her, that one feels some measure of pity for Theresa May. But there she was today, gamely putting on her bravest, gamest, face when she was asked for her reaction to Donald Trump’s latest witless provocations.  The American president, you can hardly failed to have noticed, has not covered himself in glory since the weekend’s terrorist attack in London. When the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, suggested that Londoners should not be alarmed by the deployment of additional armed officers on the streets of London, Trump blustered “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!

Campaigning starts again tomorrow, but in his speech in Carlisle today Jeremy Corbyn made what is – for any Labour leader – a fairly obvious point: 'You cannot protect the public on the cheap. The police and security services must get the resources they need not 20,000 police cuts. Theresa May was warned by the Police Federation but she accused them of "crying wolf".' In a radical departure for Corbyn, that is exactly what happened.

When the Conservatives were rebranded “Theresa May’s team” and the party's name purged from its literature, there were two explanations. One, that the UK system of Cabinet government doesn’t suit the Prime Minister, so wants an election where she’d campaign by diktat in order to govern by diktat. She'd go fetch a three-figure majority, then her Cabinet meetings would be a bit like the Spitting Image sketch about vegetables (above). The other explanation was more plausible, and benign: that her personal approval ratings were the highest recorded for any Prime Minister so it made sense for the Tories to campaign on the leader.

We’ve just had our pre-election meeting at The Spectator, and agreed the usual drill for the big night. Election day itself is dead: we relax and steel ourselves for the evening. There'll be the normal 8.30pm curry as we wait for the exit poll and we'll lay on some wine (and desk space) for contributors who'll be near our Westminster office. Katy Balls will stay up late – that’s how she likes it – and I’ll try to grab some sleep early and come into the office for 2.30am. Katy, James Forsyth and Tom Goodenough will do the night shift; Will Heaven, John O’Neill and I will do the early morning shift. We’ll record a podcast after the 10pm exit poll, which we probably won't need to revise because they're usually right.

Well, that didn’t last long: in April, I rejoined the Labour Party. Last Sunday, I cancelled my subscription and cut up my membership card. Being part of the official opposition to a Tory Government, my conscience can live with; being the official opposition to the unborn, it cannot. I've always leaned towards backing Labour. And while my radicalism may have mellowed somewhat in my old age, I would certainly have voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the first leadership contest. So when the snap election was called, it seemed like an obvious move to put my money where my ballot is.

I’ve been on the campaign trail in Scotland, and was struck by how often education was raised by voters – underlining a trend of the SNP’s domestic record catching up with Nicola Sturgeon. She had come prepared for her interview with Andrew Neil on this point, but how reliable were her answers? Ms Sturgeon’s tactic is to drag any discussion about education into the land of acronyms and statistics, knowing that the best way to get out of a tight spot is to make the subject sound dull, or parochial. But online, we have infinite space to team up with people who know these briefs, and scrutinise politician’s answers. The result is below. A health warning: this is about details, and about Scotland.