The Labour party win the General Election of 2024.

 The Labour party win the General Election of 2024.

It had been the worst of nights and then the best of nights. According to your political allegiance, your minds were torn by a thousand emotions and moods. There were the painful, anguished hearts, the regretful sobs and sniffles, tears of bitter disappointment and then the realisation that Britain had just undergone an almost revolutionary sea change in its political fortunes. There were the heartbreaking resignations, the inevitable departures and in a matter of hours, new arrivals, familiar faces and those who wish they'd had nothing to do with yesterday's earth shaking, dramatic events.

The fact is that this morning the Labour party will be installed as the new government of the United Kingdom. And there's the small matter of inaugurating Sir Keir Starmer as the new Prime Minister. After weeks of political high jinks, sometimes childish tomfoolery and complete madness, Britain have proudly declared Sir Keir Starmer as the leader of the country, the ultimate decision maker, the broker of all serious negotiations and business like discussions and the man entrusted with the unenviable responsibility of making us all feel a whole lot better than we ever thought possible.

For the last couple of weeks there have been nasty, vindictive comments, negative, deeply wounding remarks, insulting and disparaging words, politics at its most horrendously confrontational and just the most vile of slanging matches. It was the goriest of bloodbaths, a General Election to both remember and forget for a whole variety of reasons. We didn't think for a moment that British politics could ever stoop to such a degrading level and yet it did. There was the customary name calling, the pointless propaganda, the vastly exaggerated long term promises and then those rash forecasts that were simply laughable and derisory.

Of course we're relieved that it's all over now. It's the following day after the General Election and most of us are now in recovery from those tenderly executed speeches about the general health of the country. We can finally get back to doing what we were doing before, without those tedious soundbites, the tiresome cliches, the pompous platitudes and those Cabinet Ministers who just can't resist the temptation to tell you exactly how they intend to run the country without pausing for breath. They will spend the next couple of weeks after the General Election blustering, breaking bread with the nation in a very confessional manner and then outlining their intentions, guaranteeing and pontificating with constant assurances.

It is, of course, 14 years since the Labour party came anywhere near to power in 10 Downing Street. But then there was the image of a smiling Tony Blair with hugely loving and supportive wife Cherie, glad handing the good people of Britain  and smiling optimistically, convinced that things could, indeed, only get better and education, education, education would be the most urgent priority. From 1997 onwards, Blair showed us the sunny uplands and a succession of statements that would deliver an economic renaissance almost immediately and nothing would ever go wrong again. Never.

Sadly, although Blair fulfilled most of his bullet points and rosy complexioned pledges, ten years in office was enough. For a while, things did show a noticeable improvement and we were on the right train. Then there was the Iraq war which then dragged Blair into the Afghanistan conflict perhaps against his better wishes. Suddenly, former US president George Bush junior and Blair began to resemble the greatest pacifists of all time, intervening at the right time and desperate to  end all of the unnecessary death and suffering.

But fast forward to more recent times and after 14 years of David Cameron, the man who just seemed to make the most ill conceived decision on something called Brexit, there was Boris Johnson. Before long Johnson turned into the most hilarious comedian any of us had ever witnessed. In fact, so great were the levels of incompetence and ineptitude that Johnson sunk to, that the Tories must have thought they were the laughing stock of the world.

From December 2019 onwards, the country staggered from one calamity to the next. It didn't help that a global and, tragically fatal, global virus would leave the world in such a horribly perilous state of crisis and emergency. There were millions of deaths across the world and all Johnson could do was stare vacantly across to his eminent medical scientists Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Chris Witty who could hardly believe that they were the centre of attention rather than reliable Boris Johnston.

The truth is of course that the Tories were just stumbling headfirst into political meltdown. Johnson had, quite literally, lost the plot and everytime he looked over towards Vallance and Witty, we knew that here was a man who hadn't a clue what he was doing. His grammar and language would be peppered with inane and archaic references to Latin and Greek mythology. He would then ruffle that permanently uncombed blond hair that looked like some rural cornfield and then run out of excuses and ideas.

Then there were the unforgivable lies, the broken laws, the illegal behaviour, the shoddy leadership, the amateurish attempts at defending the indefensible and just outrageously inappropriate humour. Johnson's colleagues were, of course just as bad, appallingly ill advised and deliberately naive. There were the visits of Johnson's colleagues to sick parents who lived at the other end of the country when most of us were ordered to remain in hibernation for what seemed an indefinite period. There were the heady, hedonistic parties where food was eaten with triumphant relish and drink flowed like the Niagara  Falls. There was lively dancing and music and people mixing with each other in gleefully close proximity of each other. You really couldn't make it up.

Finally, Britain came to its senses and so, too, did Boris Johnson. Enough was enough. Johnson had to go and he did. Liz Truss came and went with an almost farcical brevity, almost destroying the country's economy overnight. And so the Tories plumped for one Rishi Sunak, a politician who had already turned against his friend with a sense of betrayal that none of us could believe. Now we all know that Sunak was just a respectable, level headed, sensible politician who just wanted to get on with the business of leading the country as Prime Minister.

And yet Sunak now became a marked man, branded a fool, equally as inept as his predecessors. He was enormously well informed, articulate, presentable and highly intelligent. He'd worked for Goldman Sachs, a highly reputable bank where Sunak shone brightly and where his credentials were suitably displayed. But the natural aptitude for dealing with complex financial problems may have given him the perfect chance to alleviating the country's chronic debts and digging us out of a dreadful hole.

Sadly, Sunak never really seemed the right fit and, after the wretched ignorance shown after the Normandy landings memorial ceremony, Sunak had nowhere to hide. This was just the beginning of the end for the man whose heart was probably in the right place. But when the nation expected its Prime Minister to observe the protocols surrounding those who had given and then lost their lives during the Second World War, Sunak went totally missing. The pathetic apology after the event sounded like a child who didn't mean to steal apples from the neighbour's garden but just thought they could get away with it.

Last night the Labour party achieved a landslide victory over the Tories the like of which may never be seen again. This was a political annihilation on the grandest scale. For a moment you thought of Clement Atlee and Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Labour's greatest Prime Ministers, men of honour and distinction, men who the whole of UK regarded as trustworthy, dependable and, occasionally, a good laugh.

Perhaps the most memorable images of last night came at a gymnasium in Clacton where one Nigel Farage drunk a pint in the pub if only to portray that he was just a man of the people, a man with a  finger on the pulse, patriotically British and obsessively so. Farage though, still had immigration issues and those migrants had to watch themselves. Farage finally won a seat in the House of Commons after much perseverance and was now head of the Reform party.

Then there was Ed Davey, who just  treated the General Election as if it were some gloriously amusing karaoke session. Davey, Liberal Democratic leader, had charged recklessly across the country performing like a circus clown and yet was adamant that he still loved his country and was just doing the decent thing.

And so this morning Rishi Sunak, reluctantly perhaps, left 10 Downing Street while Sir Keir Starmer promptly replaced Sunak as Prime Minister. The handover was seamless and the world this morning turned a crimson red. The red flags were flying, Socialist ideals were rigidly adhered to and the Labour party must have thought all their birthdays had come at once. So Great Britain, this is your day to turn another historical page of another political chapter. The next five years will be endlessly fascinating. Be prepared.