| For a while now, the Tory campaign had been braced for what was called a "punishment beating." They knew that anger had been pent up for some time, starting with Boris Johnson's inability to handle partygate and deepening with Liz Truss's ruinous 49 days as prime minister. Rishi Sunak – while not blameless — was the guy left holding the stick of dynamite rather than one of the ones who lit the fuse. There has already been much criticism of Sunak calling it early. Supposedly, six more months would have allowed a cut in interest rates to feed through to the economy and the resulting autumn poll would have been less bad. Well, one of my learnings from politics is that…it can always get worse. Pretending the loss was just bad timing is deluded thinking that allows the Tory party not to look deeply at why the public rejected them. Sunak went when he did because he needed fresh political authority to deal with mounting challenges that would be even worse after the summer: court opposition to Rwanda, small boat crossings, prison places and obsessional Tory party infighting. Even inflation threatens to climb back up come the autumn.  Rishi Sunak giving his resignation speech today Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg Had Sunak let that run long, there was every chance Reform could have polled even higher than the already strong outing overnight. A Nigel Farage watcher said today that the Reform leader and new MP for Clacton was days away from announcing his run for the autumn. This Bloomberg data crunch shows just how good a night they had, proving to be the force that deprived the Conservatives of scores of seats. As our brilliant data journalists put it: "Reform saw the greatest gains in 80% of the more than 250 seats ceded by the Tories under Rishi Sunak." Their gains flipped dozens of Tory seats. At lunchtime outside Number 10, Keir Starmer spoke about restoring faith in public service, ending the psychodrama, and wanting politics to be serious – amen to that. He also described a "weariness in the heart of a nation," which I think we all recognize. I was proud to hear my friend Rishi Sunak acknowledge Starmer as a man of "public spirit" — and Starmer praise Sunak's "dedication and hard work." These two men have been lampooned for being boring – I winced with the discourtesy of the Question Time audience member asking if the pair were "the best we've got" (Sir, please let me direct your gaze to France). Unfashionable though it is to say, maybe we were actually lucky to have had a choice between two decent characters? Also, I find it impossible not to relate to Lib Dem leader Ed Davey belting out Sweet Caroline – a man who does not have an easy life, but whose principled highlighting of the difficulties of a carer's life was, I think, political genius (as were the stunts). In his party's rebirth today after routs at previous elections, he offers more evidence that political defeat need not be political death. Carla Denyer of the Green Party is also a rising power in the land, who has already pledged to keep Labour "brave" on climate and sewage. But, it was also interesting to hear the new prime minister appeal to those who had not voted Labour. As Bloomberg's head of media David Merritt said on Bloomberg TV this morning, there is a chance this is a sandslide not a landslide – a big result, but one that could as easily be washed away. Many commentators today have called it, like Johnson's 2019 coalition, "a mile wide but an inch deep." Labour's share of the vote is not huge – 34%, which netted them 63% of the seats. In an eerie echo, it is almost exactly the same as the 32% won in 2019 by his much-mocked predecessor Corbyn. The vote share-to-seat ratio in the smaller parties is also one to watch. The Liberal Democrats won 12% of the vote and 71 seats; Reform got 14% and four seats. The Conservatives won 24% of the votes, which perhaps isn't as far off Labour as it might have first seemed. Prime Minister Starmer is now inside Number 10 working out just how to make his landslide last. | 
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