Election night on the gogglebox

Election night TV has become big business in recent years, as broadcasters aim to bag big-name guests and put their own spin on events. Sky News had former Commons speaker John Bercow in the studio, while the George Osborne – Ed Balls hit 2017 double act reunited on ITV. Channel 4’s Alternative Election, meanwhile, saw the broadcaster slump to just 244,000 viewers, while nearly 4.7 million watched Huw Edwards and co in action on the BBC.

As ever, for those following the results at home, the night and early morning came down to a few key moments. The first was, of course, the dramatic, unexpected, exit poll. It told us that despite generally agreed upon predictions of a slim Tory majority following a recent tightening in the poll, we were actually on course for a big Boris win.

Sitting in a broadcast tent on Abingdon Green I think my jaw physically dropped when I saw the result. And then I felt a sense of relief. Relief that it was almost certain that an anti-Semitic crank would not be heading into Downing Street.

Surprisingly, the next big moment came as the first official results came in. We normally have to wait much later into the night. However, within an hour or two of the polls closing it was clear a Tory surge was on. Broadcasters cut to the Blyth Valley declaration, a mining town where in days past they didn’t count the Labour vote. They used to weigh it. It went Tory. It was a staggering moment, prescient of what was to come for the rest of the night.

The red wall had been smashed. The voters Labour took for granted had rejected them in their droves. Twitter, as ever, had some of the inside scoop as the Tories began their party – apparently singing D:Ream’s Blairite anthem ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ as the former leader’s seat fell to them.

Jeremy Vine’s green screen graphics this time around featured a path heading up Downing Street. ITV didn’t require special effects to add adrenalin to their coverage. Instead they featured an all-action death match between former Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Momentum founder Jon Lansman. Johnson was in no mood to play nice, lambasting Lansman for the damage he and his acolytes have wrought on the Labour Party, calling it a “‘cult’ that couldn’t lead the working class out of a paper bag. All the while, Osborne sat behind them, and the camera panned to his gleeful grin. Balls just looked a bit taken aback.

By the time the DUP’s Westminster leader Nigel Dodd’s had lost his seat to Sinn Fein – Sinn Fein! – it felt like we’d had all the drama for the night. But still the results kept coming. More safe Labour seats turning blue as the country rejected Corbynism.

Of course, more was to come. In perhaps the most dramatic turn-up of all, Jo Swinson had her Portillo moment, losing East Dunbartonshire by just 144 votes. She’d run a poor national campaign, and in doing so ended up neglecting her home turf, but she did not deserve this ignominy. It was made worse by the cameras picking up Nicola Sturgeon’s ungracious, excited reaction, as she repeatedly punched the air in delight at her party capturing the scalp of the Lib Dem Leader. Swinson, though, gave a very dignified concession speech before being escorted out the back of her count.

Far more dignified than Jeremy Corbyn’s offering, certainly. As he won his own seat, but lost colleagues all around him, the Labour leader blamed everybody but himself. The theme would be taken up by his outriders in TV studios, who mentioned Brexit, but not the devastating unpopularity of their own messiah.

While Corbyn and his cronies sulked, Swinson resigned. When she took the stage on Friday afternoon, she said she was proud to have been the first female Lib Dem leader. “One of the realities of smashing glass ceilings is that a lot of broken glass comes down on your head,” she reflected, before noting that “next week is the shortest day. We will see more light in the future.”

For the Tories though, hope springs eternal following a truly extraordinary political night at the end of a truly extraordinary political year.