MOST of us, I’m sure, will be grateful that all the election hoo-ha is over, and our TV news bulletins can resume their normal diet of disasters worldwide rather than exclusively home-grown ones.

Having stayed up till 5am at the count, waiting to phone the results to various newsdesks in a few seconds of frantic freelance activity, I’ve decided: Never again.

It’s fascinating to feel part of these potentially life-changing events, watching the declarations on the big screen alongside the party workers.

But I’ve done that several times now. And when the local result is a foregone conclusion, do I need to spend the next day feeling knackered? I do not.

Although it’s delivered a workable Parliamentary majority, I honestly don’t believe this election has solved any of the problems currently dividing our nation.

The belated intervention by our former MP, Rob Key, sums it up.

A hugely-respected Tory stalwart, he felt unable to vote for his own party. He is representative of the moderate, pragmatic tradition within it that will not go away just because telegenic but congenitally unreliable Boris smirked, mumbled and tousled his way to victory when he wasn’t busy dodging difficult questions in a fridge.

Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, failed to unite the other half of the nation behind his leadership. Pursued by the Tory tabloids in full foxhunting cry, and mustering only lacklustre support from the softer left of the Labour party, he failed to convince the working-class electorate that he could lead them in a conga, let alone a tough round of negotiations with the EU or The Donald.

And the poor old LibDems seem, sadly, to have suffered irreversible reputational damage from being stitched up by the Cameron half of that old Clegg coalition.

Mr Key is right to be very worried by the extremes to which politics now seems to be going in order to hold the attention of a suspicious, or downright hostile, electorate.

Congratulations, of course, to John Glen, who seems to have mastered the knack of staying afloat as his party has been swept along on the tide of cynical opportunism.

But the really difficult decisions lie ahead, and I don’t envy him having to work alongside such ‘talents’ as Priti Patel and Dominic Raab in safeguarding the nation’s future.

Meanwhile the remote controllers in Trowbridge followed their leader’s example and hid from their own angry electorate whilst pretending to debate the massive development they’re going to foist on Harnham. What a bunch of cowards.

If they hadn’t misjudged their own housing delivery programme there’d have been no need for this.

To add insult to injury, they couldn’t even make the City Hall video link work.

A big cheer, by the way, for Tory councillor Jose Green, not exactly known for her revolutionary tendencies.

First, she tripped over her tongue, and talked about the Salisbury Transport Tragedy, instead of Strategy. Bang on!

Then she declared that Salisbury was “the jewel in the crown of the county”, warning: “If you do anything more to jeopardise it, I’ll just fall into despair, as so many people do.”

They do indeed, Jose.

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