As usual, Polly Toynbee talks the most sense:

“This is still Labour’s third great win with a majority that would have seemed handsome enough to previous Labour governments. When the votes are combined with the Lib Dems’ strongest showing since its alliance with the SDP in 1983, there is no major rightward shift. So that social democratic wind of change in 1997 was no temporary symptom of momentary Tory failure. It was still a rejection of conservatism, of the privatising, small state, anti-welfare individualism of the right and that remains the story.”

“Remember that not since 1910 has the Conservative party suffered three defeats in a row. Labour defectors to the Lib Dems have rescued the Tories from an outright hammering they deserved for a despicable campaign that stirred race hatred and knowingly falsified the facts to fuel fears on asylum and violent crime. The picture they painted of a country too dangerous to walk its streets, too dirty to enter its hospitals, too stupid to learn, was not, by and large, the country voters recognised. Abandoning the intellectual rightwing case left them naked with nothing but vacuous and toxic poster slogans. They helped increase the BNP vote by stirring race, but they were too populist for the people.”