To slip into the football argot so curiously beloved of Blair this campaign, “I’d have taken that result before the game”. Labour majority bad for Blair, usable for Brown. Tories make a few gains in (mostly) seats you’d expect to be Tory anyway, but national share of the vote at 33% DESPITE the incredibly bad 36% share for the winning party. The Tories are gaining about 1% per election: this is atrocious given how much Blair has alienated his own supporters. Lib Dems – vote share edging back to Alliance levels, modest seat gains but I’d been pessimistically telling Isabel I thought they’d lose seats overall so shows what I know. Lesson for ’09: commited Independents willing to get local (or nasty) can take almost any seat. Show pony demagogues a la Kilroy Silk still don’t play well in Britain but I still think there’s a lot of wiggle room for populist politics.