That General Election: Friday morning, the cold light of day and the results so far…

Okay, well this has been depressing, went to sleep around one, woke up at two thirty and then got back to sleep much later. I wish I could claim some foresight but I can’t, but I looked at those polls this last week and couldn’t shake the thought that a Tory majority possibly, say 18 or so, was feasible, indeed likely. But all seemed in ferment so who could say?

Things much worse in Britain for the BLP with considerable losses. DMOC made a good point during the night, that it would be good if the LP breached the 200 barrier. They’re on 203. Conversely the Tories have won a large number of seats, cruising inexorably in the early hours of the morning to the key 326 seats of majority and then on. Currently they are at 362 and in places absent Brexit one wouldn’t have expected. As to the LDs…farewell Jo Swinson, we hardly knew you. The SNP not quite as heady an evening as they might have expected from the exit poll but still very very solid.

So the exit poll was just about right, a bit low here, a bit high there.

There’s going to be plenty of time for analysis starting now but this is a Johnson era and an SNP era too and the fractures in the union hardly more explicit than they are now.

Speaking of which what of the North here? A picture emerges of an almost considered response at local levels with Alliance taking the liberal unionist Hermon seat, the SDLP back in Foyle and SF ousting Nigel Dodds and John Finucane taking his seat. The overall situation, 8 DUP, 7 SF, 2 SDLP and 1 ALL. Rory Carroll in the Guardian just before 6 in the morning had an odd analysis where he argued that SF had a grim election. I wonder. One could argue that they had a better election than they could possibly expect. As recently as 2015 SF gained just 4 seats, before a further 3 in 2017. Even keeping 6 was a big ask. Losing 1 to the SDLP and gaining another was actually a good day for them by any reasonable measure and losing vote share is not quite so unexpected given the broader context.

But more broadly Carroll didn’t note one crucial aspect, that there were now more nationalist MPs returned than unionist MPs.

The DUPs Brexit position has cost them dear and their pretensions over confidence and supply have come back to bite them. It has certainly delivered a situation where they are no longer the only voice from NI in the HOC. That alone is a significant change as is the sense that Brexit or not new configurations of political support are emerging.