Polling day itself, for a Sunday political editor, is a bit like being nine months pregnant. You feel fat and exhausted (too much junk food, never enough sleep); you know that once it all starts, it's going to be a world of pain and sleeplessness, but there's nothing you can do at this late stage to make it any easier. There's nothing you can do but wait for something to happen in the middle of the night, and then run round like a lunatic for 48 hours trying to get the paper together.
Anyway, it's (halfway) over now. And here's what it felt like:
Terribly controlled, compared to 2001, when Conservative Central Office let all the hacks into its basement to stuff ourselves on their twiglets and watch them basically dying live on TV while we got lots of indiscretions out of weeping staffers in the early hours. Oddly enough, they decided not to do this again last night. Labour went through the usual farce of insisting everyone was banned from the 'results service' at the National Portrait Gallery (not allowed to call it a party - too triumphalist) and then letting half of Fleet Street in the back door, thus enraging the other half. By all accounts it was rather tame by previous standards. At least the Lib Dems let it all hang out at the Commonwealth Club.
But the best party of the night was ITN's rather surreal affair, on a boat moored near the Commons - endless champagne, gossip and an awful lot of B-list celebrities. Will not recover quickly from watching Margaret Thatcher deep in conversation with Nicholas Parsons from Sale of the Century.
As I write there are still over a dozen seats to declare I think but it's pretty clear what's happened.
Tony Blair has been whacked on the nose - although the majority will still be 60plus, the sort of victory Labour used to dream of in the 1980s, it's a wake not a party this morning because you can't watch many of your colleagues lose their jobs and still feel triumphant. And because Labour MPs who hung on are seeing the writing on the wall - is this the beginning of the great slide downhill, which means they'll lose in 2009?
On the other hand not a great night for the Tories either. If they were on any kind of a roll they should've got back seats like Cheadle and Norfolk North from the Lib Dems, Hove and Birmingham Edgbaston from Labour: and they should not have seen the Lib Dems take Cambridge, which used to be a Tory seat before it went Labour in 1992. They have been on the wrong side on the issues that counted in some of these seats - tuition fees and the war - and have done better in seats where immigration was a big issue (across Kent, for example). But that's not enough of a base on which to string together a recovery by 2009. Most of what they've got back are seats that it was frankly bizarre for Labour to hold in the first place - they've not moved into the cities they used to hold when Thatcher was in power, like Liverpool and Manchester.
And for the Liberal Democrats some jaw-dropping moments - like getting Hornsey and Wood Green - but the decapitation strategy seems to have backfired: most of the senior Tories they were targeting actually increased their majorities, suggesting either that they worked those seats unbelievably hard or that there is a 'sympathy' vote that comes out when you target someone so openly.
The reaction seems to be not just against the war or Blair personally but against incumbency, against central control and the electorate clearly didn't believe all those last minute ads selling the line that if one in ten Labour voters deserted, Howard would get in. Some weird, patchy results too: the most marginal Labour MP, Jim Knight, actually increased his vote but people with over 10,000 majorities lost their seats.
The dog that didn't bark: the Midlands marginals. The 'Rover effect' from people who lost their jobs when Rover collapsed just didn't happen - Jacqui Smith, the trade and industry minister, actually increased her vote in Redditch; Labour didn't lose Birmingham Northfields. Think what the majority would have looked like if Rover had cost them seats.
Serious questions, though, about the legitimate mandate of a government that got a smaller share of the vote in England to the Tories (meaning it's pretty dependent on Scottish and Welsh seats) and sneaked in on a smaller share of the vote for a governing party than in 1974. As I write Tony Blair's just done his speech from outside Downing Street and the difference between this and 1997 or even 2001 is so striking: no triumphalism, emphasising that they've got to listen to the voters more, but the things he's promising to listen on - like immigration and school discipline - are not what the Labour party wants to hear and not, arguably, the reason he lost several of those seats.
Not sure after all this whether the 'masochism strategy' - letting real people shout at the PM in front of the TV cameras day in day out, and accuse him of being to blame for everything wrong with their lives - has worked or not. The fascinating thing about covering this election has been the total death of deference: people are used to the idea now that when you meet the PM you hurl abuse at him, and that's a genie that won't go back in the bottle. TB has clearly not enjoyed it at times and is touchy when you mention it. Maybe the hostility to him at the balllot box would've been worse without it: but just myabe, seeing people yelling at the PM every night on your telly has simply made hating TB fashionable.
I'm off for more caffeine now (three hours of sleep last night, about an 18-hour day in front of me, then another four hours kip and back to the office ....
