One pattern emerging clearly is that there has been a degree of punishment going on. As we pointed out the day before yesterday, this is much more important than so-called ‘tactical’ voting. Thus Jacqui Smith, DUP leader Peter Robinson, Nick Griffin, Charles Clarke, Lembit Opik and David Heathcote-Amory have all lost their seats – probably through being both mendacious and divisive. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in Buckingham – I understand this result won’t come until 13.3o today, as two Bucks elections are going through the same counting hall…and the Speaker has been told his result is the less important.

The significance is that, despite much dilution of this over the last forty years, dislike of arrogant, silly and unethical behaviour remains strong – and MPs ignore this at their peril. I may have been too hard on Benedict Brogan yesterday.

Perhaps the most constitutionally explosive trend coming through concerns the state of the Union that has been the United Kingdom since 1702. It may not be an overstatement to say that this election has signalled the beginning of the end of it.

Remove Wales and Scotland from the equation, and this result is a Tory landslide. In an English Parliament, they would be by far the largest Party. Effectively, large-scale public sector employment (and welfare support for people from the Government) has ensured that nationalist and left-wing Parties are now the only viable attractions for these other two countries.

In Scotland particularly, the Tories don’t really exist any more. The country is going in an entirely different economic and social direction compared to England. It will be without doubt disastrous; but I think we may well have reached that point when we must say to the truculent teenager, “On yer bike”. Certainly, McKevin doesn’t give a stuff about our issues: the remarkable thing about the Scottish result is that not one single seat has changed hands. That suggests to me an electorate which, on the whole, thinks a ‘UK’ election is irrelevant.

Finally, I think the Scottish elite running the Commons no longer has a moral leg to stand on, let alone a mandate. A situation where two Scots are running the country and its finances – despite the complete English rejection of their Party – is plainly a scandal.

There’ll be a more focused piece on the LibDems’ disappointment – and why it happened – in due course. Suffice to say here (and this isn’t an excuse – I was wrong) it made a nonsense of almost every prediction except – as usual – that of the exit poll.