It was just before breakfast, at a leisure centre in Norfolk, that this particular era of Conservatism came to an end. A white-faced Liz Truss left the stage without a word, after losing her supposedly impregnable seat to Labour.
Though Keir Starmer had effectively won the election some hours before, this was middle England’s final, cleansing act of revenge against the former prime minister most strongly associated – admittedly against stiff competition from her predecessor – with that particular strain of blithe incompetence that has ruined lives for too long. Justice was done. It felt less like an election than a miraculously bloodless revolution.
