I expect the Germans have a special word for it. The suppressed-elation-you-are-feeling-that-you-dare-not-wallow-in-too-much-just-in-case-you-jinx-it. This election campaign should have been schadenfreude on steroids, it should have been a non-stop, six-week street party. Instead it’s been a sort of reverse Partygate, with Labour supporters steadfastly refusing to celebrate, even when we really ought to be. It’s been like watching the most brilliant, hilarious in-flight movie – all the while knowing that the pilot of the plane still has to make an emergency landing in a snowstorm. However wonderful the entertainment, it’s hard to relax and enjoy it until catastrophe has definitely been averted.
Of course, the older voters among us have been here before. In 1997, there was a prevailing anxiety that somehow the left would manage to blow it yet again and the Tories would get back in for a fifth term in office. If you never read Things Can Only Get Better, my memoir of 18 Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter, I won’t spoil it for you by telling you who wins at the end. But there is a section in the final chapter when I describe Labour supporters spending the spring of 1997 in despondent denial, like brides who had been abandoned at the altar, unable to let themselves fall in love ever again.
