So Theresa May did save the Labour party....

....though not in the way I originally thought when the election was called with such a huge lead in the polls, by a crushing win giving new life to Labour moderates. Instead she has saved Labour by breathing life and conviction into Labour and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, seen almost universally as a hopeless duffer until a few weeks ago.

How did she live up to her nickname in some quarters, Mrs Mayhem, by plunging the country into even more uncertainty?

I wish I had written a blog on something I said to my other half at the time the campaign started: you can't run an election on a single issue. Ted Heath tried it in 1974 (note for youngsters: the issue was who runs the country, the government or the unions?) The result was a hung parliament and a minority government. May tried it 43 years later, on Brexit, with a not dissimilar result. But a general election is always about who the electorate trust to to run the country for 5 years over a range of issues and stuff always comes up in the campaign. But I didn't think they would also make the mistake of releasing a hopeless manifesto (pun intended - it offered no real hope). As one Tory said, they shot themselves in the head.

I've just watched the ever plausible - and therefore very dangerous - John McDonnell discussing the 1974 election, and the prospect of a further election soon as happened then, with Andrew Neill. He made exactly the same point about an election never being about a single issue. It's the only time I have ever agreed with him.

A few other thoughts:

1. Despite the fact that there is a hung parliament, this isn't like 2010 and the coalition government. We are back to 2 party politics big time, with the combined Tory and Labour vote over 80% of the overall vote for the first time since 1979. Even though it is clearly a huge failure, the Conservatives won over 42% of the vote, not far off what Tony Blair got in his landslide win of 1997. The Tories increased their share of the vote by 6 percentage points - but Labour increased by 10 as the other parties all got squeezed.
2. Labour's electoral machine got back in gear. The key decision was the positioning on Brexit. Unequivocally backing Brexit while emphasising the need for a good deal and staying in the single market was brave, decisive and successful. It neutralised the Tories' main line of attack. The possible vulnerability on single market = freedom of movement = no 'control of borders' didn't materialise. The Labour back room fed Corbyn with well scripted platitudes to fend off difficult questions as he turned from rabbit in the headlights to passably competent in media terms. In contrast it was the Tories who froze and, compounded by the 2 terror incidents, they lost control of the agenda totally as May got badly damaged by her screeching u-turn on care costs, undermining the "strong and stable" mantra that sounded very empty by the end of the campaign.
3. In most campaigns, for all the talk of volatility and late swings, there is usually very little movement in the polls. Often the gap narrows but only by a few points at the most. Not this time. It was very uncomfortable watching the egeregious Len McCluskey purring today over the performance of his acolyte, Corbyn, in the campaign. The movement in the campaign was astounding and probably unprecedented. It just goes to show what offering hope can do.
4. The DUP will back May if only because they would die rather than be on the same side as IRA appeasers Corbyn and McDonnell. But the last minority goverment supported by Irish MPs, Jim Callaghan's, ended ignominiously. We are in the greatest period of uncertainty I have ever known: Brussels is ready to negotiate, even if we were ready we are not now and whatever gets negotiated could easily fail to get through the Commons. It must be more likely than not that there will be another election before the negotiations are complete. Indeed, it is easy to imagine the failure to get a draft deal approved in Parliament being the trigger for an election. Rather than us deciding no deal is better than a bad deal it may be Brussels that decides whether to grant extra time for the negotiations or not. Who could blame them for saying "away with you", or words to that effect. (What does "go forth and multiply sound like in 27 languages simultaneously?) I note Paddy Power is offering 5/4 against another election in 2017. Perhaps for the same reasoning as mine they think an election is more likely in 2019 than 2018 or 2020, with their next lowest odds, 11/4, being on the new Parliament going to 2021. It's gonna be a rocky ride.
5. The Labour entryism project to produce our first Marxist government is now tantalisingly close to succeeding. Although they only got about the same number of seats as Kinnock in 1992, getting less than half way to winning from where they were, they got a whopping 40% of the vote. Corbyn is now seen as credible. All they need is for the Tories to become unpopular, say by losing their remaining credibility for organising anything short of the proverbial piss up in a brewery and then a crisis to precipitate an election. Both easily forseeable. Then they most likely win easily. After all, Blair won handsomely with 36% in 2005. I've written before about how governments get stale or unpopular and the other lot get in because it's "time for a change".  Next time the Labour manifesto might not be so blatantly impracticable - having established their credentials, they don't need to throw as much in. I'll save for another post why this prospect, which now seems a probabilty rather than a possibility, is so terrifying, mainly for the benefit of the young people who have supported Corbyn so strongly but do not have experience of what it's like to try to get a nationalised company to provide any level of customer service, let alone the risks to our economy and security. (I should emphasise this is not because it's Labour per se, but because it's Corbyn-McDonnell et al, an entirely different prospect from Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock, Smith, Blair and Brown or even Miliband).

Mrs May hasn't just saved Labour, she may well have paved the way for them to form the next government. A remarkable achievement when, within the last 12 months many Labour MPs could not envisage a Labour government for at least a decade.